


Terminator

by Ashton210



Series: RWBY STYLE [13]
Category: RWBY, Terminator - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:55:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25260472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashton210/pseuds/Ashton210
Summary: Terminator but with Rwby characters.
Series: RWBY STYLE [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751530





	1. 1

The screen opens to Downtown Atlas on a hot summer day. In slow motion humans and Faunus move in herds among the glittering rows of cars jammed bumper to bumper. Heat ripples, distorting the torrent of faces. The image is surreal, dreamy.

And like a dream it begins very slowly to change. It's the same spot as before, but now it is a landscape in Hell. The cars are stopped in rusted rows, still bumper to bumper. The skyline of buildings beyond has been shattered by some unimaginable force like a row of kicked-down sandcastles. Wind blows through the desolation, keening with the sound of ten million dead souls. It scurries the ashes into drifts, stark white in the moonlight against the charred rubble.

Atlas, July 11, 2029

We see fire-blackened human bones. Beyond the mound is a vast tundra of skulls and shattered concrete. The rush hour crowd burned down in their tracks. A playground... where intense heat has half-melted the jungle gym, the blast has warped the swing set, the merry-go-round sagged in the firestorm. Small skulls look accusingly from the ash-drifts. We hear the distant echo of children's voices... playing and laughing in the sun. A silly, sing-song rhyme as It slowly moves over towards the seared asphalt where the faint hieroglyphs of hopscotch lines are still visible. It then comes to rest on a burnt and rusted tricycle... next to the tiny skull of its owner. Then while still on the tricycle, a woman speaks.

_"3 billion humans and Faunus live ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare, the war against the Machines..."_

A metal foot crushes the skull like china, revealing a humanoid machine holding a massive battle rifle. It looks like a Chrome Skeleton... a high-tech Death figure. It is the endoskeleton of a Series 800 terminator. Its glowing red eyes compassionless, sweep the dead terrain, hunting.

The sounds of roaring turbines. Searchlights blaze down as a formation of flying HK (Hunter-Killer) patrol machines passing overhead. Following them toward the jagged horizon, beyond which we see flashes, and hear the distant thunder of a pitched battle in progress.

Human and Faunus troops were engaged in desperate combat with the machines for possession of the dead Remnant. The survivors are a ragtag guerrilla army. Skynet, created by Atlas, created weapons consisting of Ground HKs, tank-like robot gun-platforms, flying Aerial HKs, four-legged gun-pods called Centurions, and the humanoid Terminators in various forms.

We then see a man pushing slowly forward as the battle rages outside. The screen closes in on his face as he lowers the binoculars and they see that he is forty-five years old. His features are severe as they show the left side of his face being heavily scarred. An impressive man forged in the furnace of a lifetime of war. The name stitched on the band of his beret is Schnee.

 _"Skynet, the computer which controlled the machines, sent two Terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human resistance... Finch Schneeâ€¦ My son. The first Terminator was programmed to strike at me, in the year 1984... before Finch was born. It failed. The second was set to strike at Finch himself, when he was still a child. As before, the resistance was able to send a lone warrior. A protector for Finch. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first..."_ the voice said.

Wild fingers of blue-white electric arcs dance in a steel canyon formed by two tractor trailers, parked side by side in the back lot of an all-night truck stop. Then the strange lightning forms a circular opening in mid-air, and in the sudden flare of light we see a figure in a sphere of energy. Then the energy whites out with an explosive thunderclap!

Through the clearing vapor we see the figure clearly... a very _naked_ figure.

His physique was massive, perfect even, with Blue Eyes and Blonde Hair. His Face: devoid of emotion. The Terminator stands and impassively surveys its surroundings.

On a back route to north L.A., a handful of local truckers' hunch over chili-sizes, CAT hats pushed back on their heads. Three bikers are playing a game of pool in the back, their empty beers lining the table's rail. The dive's owner, Port, a fat, aging biker-type in a soiled apron, stands behind the bar. Nothing much going on...

Then the front door opens and a big naked guy strolls in â€“ that doesn't happen every night. All eyes simultaneously swivel towards Jaune. His emotionless gaze passes over the customers as he walks calmly through the room. Everyone freezes, not sure how to react.

The screen switches over to Jaune's POV. A digitized electronic scan of the room overlaid with alphanumeric readouts which change faster than the human eye can follow.

Going back to normal, Jaune moves past the staring truckers, the owner, and the awestruck waitress and approaches a large nasty-looking biker puffing on a cigar. The strange POV is back, outlining the biker's body, or "selected", and thousands of estimated measurements appear. His clothing has been analyzed and deemed suitable...

"I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle." Jaune said in a deep, and powerful voice.

The big biker's eyes narrowed. He takes a long draw on this cigar, the tip cherry-red hot.

"You forgot to say please." Cigar Biker said.

He takes his cigar and grinds the tip on Jaune's chest, which produces not the slight reaction of pain. Jaune, calmly and without expression, grabs Cigar by his meaty upper arm...

Cigar screams from the grip.

Jaune doesn't see Cigar's friend behind him, holding his pool cue by the narrow end like a Louisville Slugger. The heavy send whistles in a powerful swing and cracks in two across the back of Jaune's head.

Jaune doesn't seem to notice. Doesn't even blink. Without releasing his grip on Cigar, he snaps his arm straight back and grabs Pool Cue by the front of his jacket. Suddenly the heavyset biker finds himself flying through the nearest window. CRAASSH!

Jaune then hurls Cigar, all 230 pounds of him, clear over the bar, through the serving window into the kitchen, where he lands on the big flat GRILL. We hear a sound like sizzling bacon as Cigar screams, flopping jerking. He rolls off in a smoking heap.

The third biker whips out a knife with an eight-inch blade and slashes at Jaune's face, earning worried gasps from some in the audience. Jaune grabs the arcing blade with his bare hand. Holding it by the razor-sharp blade he jerks it from the guy's hand. In a stunning display, he flips it and grabs the handle like you're supposed to hold a knife. He grabs the biker and slams him face-down over the bar. Then he brings the knife whistling down, pinning the biker's shoulder to the bar top with his own steel.

The doors bang open and Jaune strides in. The Faunus cook does a fast fade as Jaune walks toward Cigar, who is cursing in pain on the floor. With his deep-fried fingers he struggles to get out the .45 auto tucked under his leather jacket. But he can't even hold onto it. Jaune takes it from him. Instead of pointing it at him, Jaune carefully examines the weapon, analyzing its caliber and operating condition. Jaune, being what he is, never threatens... that's a human thing. He just takes.

Cigar senses what he must do when the emotionless eyes come back to him. He grabs the keys out of his pocket.

"Take it." Cigar said as he throws it to Jaune which he catches it in midair.

Jaune walks out from the building, fully clothed now in a black leather jacket, black shirt, leather riding pants, and heavy, clean boots, surveying the parked Harleys.

He sticks the .45 in his belt and swings one leg over a massive custom electro-glide. He slips the key in the ignition. Kicks over the engine. It catches with a roar and he slams the heavy iron into gear with a clunk.

Port appears at the diner's door with a sawed-off 10-Gauge Winchester Lever-Action Shotgun. He fires into the air and jacks another round in fast, aiming at Jaune's back.

"I can't let you take the man's wheels, son. Now get off or I'll put you down." Port said, threatening Jaune.

Jaune turns and considers him coldly. He eases the shifter up into neutral and rocks the bike onto its kickstand. He swings his leg over and walks calmly toward the guy.

Jaune strides right up to Port, staring straight into the shotgun's muzzle.

"That's it, goddamn it." Port said as Jaune's hand blurs out like a striking cobra and is somehow suddenly holding the shotgun.

Port gapes, knowing he's screwed. Jaune walked to Port while he walked backward with his hands up, but he stops after he felt the doorframe. Then... Jaune reaches toward himâ€¦And slips the sunglasses out of Port's shirt pocket.

He puts them on making him even more intimidating.

He strides back to the Harley and roars off in a shower of gravel. Jaune roars down the freeway, heading for L.A. Cold neon flares across the chrome of the big bike. The 10-gauge is jammed through the clutch and brake cables, across the handlebars. The lights flow over Jaune's wrap-around sunglasses like the tracks of tracer rounds.

The First Street Bridge. Rusting chain-link fence and graffiti- covered walls. An L.A.P.D. black-and-white cruises the empty street.

A tremendous blue-white glare suddenly spills out between the columns of the overpass. The young uniformed cop in the car whips his head around at the source of the light. He pulls over quickly, in time to see the powerfully arcing electrical discharge reaches its peak between the columns. Lightning climbs the chain-link fence and light standards, lighting up the night, and papers swirl in a blasting whirlwind.

The cop climbs from his cruiser as the glow fades. He sees vapor dissipating as he approaches the spot where he saw the strange light. He draws his revolver and cautiously moves into the shadows between the rows of pillars. A naked man glides from a shadowed doorway behind the cop. Nothing special about him. Certainly not built like a Terminator. The flash of light and the fact that he is naked are good clues that he just arrived from the future. His features are handsome bordering on severe. His eyes are indigo, and his hair a burnt orange. Penetrating. Intelligent.

The cop spins at a sound. Too late. Cardin is already on him. The blow is lighting fast, and the cop drops like a bag of sand. As the unconscious cop hits the deck, his Beretta 9mm Automatic clattering next to him. Cardin hand leans closer to the body and picks up the pistol.

Highly polished black shoes rounding the rear tire of the police cruiser. Following the shoes, we see as Cardin, dressed now in LAPD blue, climbs behind the wheel. He looks and acts exactly like a cop. Cool, alert, confident in his power, his expression emotionless and judgmental. He sees a computer terminal, attached to the dash. Putting in the name Flinch Schnee, information begins to pull up.

A Juvenile Division files. Subject: Finch Schnee. Below his arrest record are his vital stats. Mother: Winter Schnee. Legal Guardians: Mercury and Cinder Fall. And below their names, an address: 523 S. Almond. Reseda, Atlas.

Officer Cardin stares at the screen for a moment, puts the car in gear and drives into the night.

Finch Schnee, who at his moment is ten years old and busy reassembling the carburetor on his Honda 125 dirt bike. He has ripped Levi's and long stringy hair. A sullen mouth. Eyes which reveal an intelligence as sharp as a scalpel. The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" blasts from a boom box next to him.

A woman, Cinder Fall, stands in the doorway of the garage, yelling over the music.

"...Finch? Finch! Get in here right now and clean up that pigsty of yours." She yells to him.

Finch's friend Helios, a thirteen-year-old Hispanic Monkey Faunus, watches as Finch replies by turning up the volume on the boom box.

Cinder gives up with a slam of the house's back door.

"Your foster parents are kinda dicks, right?" Helios asked after sensing the tension.

"Gimme that Phillips right there." Finch ordered, ignoring Helios question.

Cinder storms into the room. Mercury Fall, her husband, watches sports on the TV. They're both in their thirties. Middle-class working stiffs.

"I swear I've had it with that goddamn kid. He won't even answer me." Cinder complained. Neither does he.

"Mercury? Are you gonna sit there or are you gonna do something?" She asks/demands him.

He sighs, throws down the TV's remote and heads for the garage.

Finch hops on the bike. Kick-starts it. Helios picks up Finch's nylon bag, then climbs on the back. Mercury enters and shouts over the engine, which Finch revs louder and louder.

"Finch! Get your ass inside right now and do what your mother says!" Mercury shouted.

Finch pins Mercury with a defiant glare.

"She's not my mother, Mercury!" Finch said.

He revs the engine and peels out of the garage, with Helios almost falling off the back. They take off down the street.

A sign on a chain link fence topped with concertina wire reads: Pescadero State Hospital For The Criminally Insane. Beyond it squats an imposing four-story building. Institutional brick. Barred windows. About as inviting as KGB headquarters. Security guards patrol the manicured grass.

Sunlight is a barred slash on the bare institutional wall. The room is empty of all furnishings save the bed, a stainless-steel sink, toilet, and a dented metal mirror. The audience hears a rhythmic grunting, small explosions of breath in perfectly measured intervals. A bedframe leaned upright against the wall, legs facing outward. A pair of sweaty hands grip one leg. Tendons knot and release as someone does pull-ups. A mane of tangled hair hides the face that pulls up, dips out, and comes back.

A woman in a tank top and hospital pants in hanging from the top leg of the vertical bedframe. Her body is straight and taut. Knees bent so the feet clear the ground. The arms are lean and muscular. The inmate, face hidden, pulls up, dips, pulls up. Like a machine. No change in rhythm.

Figures move down a corridor of polished tile and two- tone walls. Dr. Oobleck, a smug criminal psychologist, leads a group of young interns. Following laconically, are three burly attendants.

"The next patient is a 29-year old female diagnosed as acute schizo-affective disorder. The usual indicators... depression, anxiety, violent acting-out, delusions of persecution." Oobleck said to the interns.

The interns nod judiciously.

He continues his explanation, "The delusional architecture is interesting. She believes a machine called a 'Terminator', which looks human of course, was sent back though time to kill her. And, that the father of her child was a soldier, sent to protect her... he was from the future too...The year 2029, if I remember correctly." He finishes with a smile. The interns chuckle.

"Here we are."

Oobleck stops at one of the soundproof steel doors. There is a two- way speaker beneath a tiny window. Oobleck flips the intercom switch.

"'Morning, Winter." Oobleck said.

She turns slowly to reveal herself. Winter Schnee is not the same woman she was remembered as. Her eyes peer out through a wild tangle of hair like those of a cornered animal. Defiant and intense but skittering around looking for escape at the same time. Fight or flight. Down one cheek is a long scar, from just below the eye to her upper lip.

"Good morning, Dr. Oobleck. How's the knee?" She asks in a chilling tone.

Oobleck's smug composure drops a second. Then returns.

"Fine, Winter." He said.

He then switches off the intercom and speaks to the interns. "She, uh... stabbed me in the kneecap with my pen a few weeks ago."

Winter watches them talking about her through the glass but can't hear them. She feels like a lab animal. The interns look in at her through the glass as Oobleck talks. With her face drawn, eyes haggard and hair wild, she looks like she belongs where she is.

"Let's move on, shall we?" Oobleck asks as the continue their journey. As the interns walk on, Oobleck steps close to Douglas, the head attendant, and speaks low.

"Douglas, I don't like seeing the patients disturbing their rooms like this. See that she takes her Thorazine, would you?" Oobleck asked.

Douglas is 6'4", 250 pounds, and as warm-hearted as a rattlesnake. He nods, catching Oobleck's meaning, and gestures for the other attendants to hang back as Oobleck moves on in his rounds.

Winter looks up as the cell door opens. Douglas walks in slowly, idly tapping his police baton against the door in an ominous rhythm. The other two orderlies ease in behind him. One of them carries a stun baton like a sawed-off cattle prod. The other has a tray with cups of red liquid-Thorazine.

"Time to take your meds, Schnee." Douglas said.

Winter faces him, weight centered. Feral eyes darting from one to the other.

"You take it." Winter said.

"Now you know you got to be good cause you up for review this afternoon." Douglas said.

"I'm not taking it. Now I don't want any trouble." Winter said as she didn't want to drink that awful medicine.

"Ain't no trouble at all." Douglas said quietly.

He whips the baton in a whistling backhand, which takes her square in the stomach. She doubles over and drops to her knees, unable to breathe. Douglas tips the bed and it slams down with a crash, right next to her. He takes the stun wand from the other attendant and walks forward.

Winter, grimacing and struggling to breathe, said "You... son of a... AAARRGH!"

The stun wand hits her between shoulder blades as she tries to rise. It drives her to the floor, pinning her like a bug. Little electric arcs crackle as the baton makes her writhe in pain. He then grabs her by the hair and jerks her up to her knees. He holds the cup of Thorazine in front of her lips.

"Last call, sugar." He says as he pours it down her throat. Gasping, she chokes the zombie juice down. Douglas and one of the orderlies close her mouth to force her to swallow it. After she swallow her medicine, Douglas and the orderlies leave the room.

Officer Cardin pulls up on the address that he looked at earlier. He stares at the screen for a moment to confirm the location, then gets out the car.

From the inside of the house, we hear Cardin knocking on the door and we see Mercury Fall opening it, revealing the unsmiling face of Officer Cardin beyond the screen door. Mercury greets him with a weary sigh.

"Are you the legal guardian of Finch Schnee?" Cardin asked.

"That's right, Officer. What's he done now?" Mercury asked.

Cinder appears in the doorway behind Mercury, concerned.

"Could I speak with him, please?" Cardin asked sweetly and with a little concern.

Mercury shrugs, showing the cop he's past his patience with the boy. "Well, you could if he were here. He took off on his bike this morning. Could be anywhere." He said.

"Do you have a photograph of Finch?"

Mercury gestures to Cinder to get one and then asks Cardin. "You gonna tell me what this is about?"

"I just need to ask him a few questions." He answered as Cinder handed him the photograph and he look at the photo for a few seconds. "He's a good-looking boy. Do you mind if I keep this picture?"

"No, go on. There was a guy here this morning looking for him too." Cinder said.

"Yeah, big guy on a bike. Has that got something to do with this?" Mercury asked.

Officer Cardin registers the significance of that. He realizes who the big guy must be. He smiles. Reassuringly shakes his head no. "No. I wouldn't worry about him. Thank you for your cooperation." he says. He then starts to leave.

Finch furtively hunches before a Ready-Teller machine at the rear of a local bank while his friend Helios stands lookout. Finch slips a stolen ATM card into the machine slot. It is something he's rigged up, because trailing from the card is ribbon-wire which goes to some kind of black-box electronics unit he's got in his ever-present knapsack. He holds the pack between his knees and pulls out a little lap-top keyboard, which is also connected to the black-box.

Finch enters a few commands and the plasma-screen displays the PIN number for that account. He quickly enters the number on the Ready- Teller's keypad and asks it for 300 bucks. The machine whirs then begin dispensing twenty-dollar bills. Helios looks back over his shoulder amazed.

"Easy money!" Finch said exciting.

"Where'd you learn all this stuff?" Helios questioned.

Finch collects the twenties as the machine kicks them out. A cool and professional electronic-age thief at ten years old.

"From my mom. My real mom, I mean. Come on man," he grabs the last bills, "let's go!" Finch said.

They sprint around the corner and huddle behind the building as Finch counts out Helios's share. He folds five twenties and palms them to the other kid. When Finch opens his wallet to put in his money, Helios notices a picture in a plastic sleeve.

"That her?" Helios asked.

Finch reluctantly shows his friend the Polaroid. It is a shot of Winter. Pregnant, in a jeep near the Vacuo border. Finch doesn't know it now, but he will carry the photo with him for over 30 years, and give it to a young man named Qrow Branwen, who will travel back in time to become his father.

"So, she's pretty cool, huh? Helios asked.

"Actually no, she's a complete psycho. That's why she's up at Pescedero. She tries to blow up a computer factory, but she got shot and arrested." Finch said.

"No shit?" Helios asked.

"Yeah, she's a total loser. C'mon, let's go spend some money." Finch said.

Finch has tried to sound casual, but we see in his eyes that is really hurts. He slaps Helios on the shoulder, and they jump onto his Honda. Finch fires up and they whine off down the alley.

Angle through an alley from the main street. We see Finch and Helios flash by on the Honda a block away. Hold a beat. Then... a big chrome wheel shows up. Rising upward, we see a leather-clad leg to show Jaune's implacable face. He surveys the area slowly as the bike idles, then kicks it into gear and moves on, scanning in a slow shark-like manner, not aware that it missed its prey by seconds.

Back to Winter, we see she is shackled, hands and feet, to the bed. Sunlight falls across her pale face. A hand enter frame, gently stroking her cheek. She wakes up to see Qrow Branwen. Sitting on the edge of her bed, looking exactly the same as we last saw him in 1984. Scruffy Black hair and a long raincoat.

"Qrow? You're dead." Winter said, not believing what she was seeing.

"Where's our son, Winter?" Qrow asked with his voice strangely cold.

"They took him away from me." Winter answered.

"He's the target now." Qrow said as he begins to remove the shackle.

"I know!" Winter exclaimed.

"He's all alone. You have to protect him." Qrow said.

"I know. You tell me how I am supposed to do that. He doesn't even believe in me anymore. I've lost him." Winter replied.

"You're strong Winter. Stronger than you ever thought you could be. On your feet, soldier!" Qrow exclaimed. He lifts her up, but she just sits on his leg and kisses him on his cheek and neck.

"I love you Winter. I always will." Qrow said.

"I need you." Winter said.

"I'll always be with you." Qrow said as he stops her for a second and looks her in the eye. "Remember the message? The future is not set. There is not fate but what we make for ourselves."

Winter closes her eyes but for a moment but when she opens them again, he's gone. She looks around and sees him at the door.

"Stay with me." Winter said.

"There's not much time left in the world, Winter." He replies as he goes out the door. Winter jumps from the bed, frantic, and yanks the door open. Winter staggers from her cell and we see Qrow is already, impossibly, a hundred feet away, striding down the dim corridor. A silhouette in a long coat, disappearing around a corner.

"Qrow, don't go!" Winter exclaimed as she runs after him, her bare feet slapping the cold linoleum. Her hospital gown floats out behind her as she dream-runs along the seemingly infinite corridor. She reaches the corner, slides around it, and it leads her to a door. She goes through it and emerges into...A beautiful sunlight morning. Children were playing nearby... sliding down slides, clambering through a jungle gym. Winter knows this dream now... This is the worst of all her nightmares. She starts to scream but no sound comes out. The sky explodes into white light.

Then she wakes up... in her cell, shackled to the bed.

Sunlight hurts her eyes. She looks desperate and defeated. She knows the war is coming. It visits her every time she closes her eyes. Lost and alone, Winter feels all hope recede for herself and for humanity.

Moving to a Video screen, playing a previously recorded session. Winter is laying her head across her arms, talking softly.

"... It's... like a giant strobe light, burning right through my eyes... but somehow I can still see. Look, you know the dream's the same every night, why do I have to â€“" Video Winter said.

"Please continue." Video Oobleck said.

The real Winter dispassionately watches herself on the screen. Her expression is controlled. Oobleck watches her watching. They are in a brightly lit interview room. Two attendants stand nearby.

"The children look like burnt paper... black, not moving. Then the blast wave hits them, and they fly apart like leaves." Video Winter said.

Video Winter can't go on. The real Winter watches herself cry on tape, her expression cold. We hear Oobleck speak on the tape.

"Dreams about cataclysm or the end of the world are very common, Winter." Video Oobleck said.

"It's not just a dream. It's real, you moron! I know the date is happens!" Video Winter shouted, her mood shifting to sudden rage.

"I'm sure it feels very real to youâ€“" Video Oobleck said as he got interrupted.

"On August 29th 1997 it's going to feel pretty fucking real to you, too! Anybody not wearing number two million sunblock in going to have a real bad day, get it?" Video Winter asked.

"Relax now, Winterâ€“" Video Winter said trying to calm her down but interrupted again.

"You think you're alive and safe, but you're already dead. Everybody, you, him, everybody... you're all fucking dead!" Video Winter shouted.

She is raving, half out of her chair. The orderly moves to inject her with something.

"You're the one living in a dream, Oobleck, not me! Because I know it happens. It happens!" Video Winter exclaimed.

Oobleck pauses the tape... freezing Winter's contorted face. Real Winter turns away from the screen, he expression stony.

"â€¦I was afraid... and confused. I feel much better, now. Clearer." Winter said.

Oobleck gives a calculated paternal smile. "Yes. Your attitude has been very positive lately."

Winter looks up at him with her voice is hopeful. "It has helped me a lot to have a goal, something to look forward to."

"And what it that?" Oobleck asked.

"You said I could be transferred to the minimum-security wing and have visitors if I showed improvement in six months. Well, it's been six months, and I was looking forward to seeing my son." Winter admits.

"I see. Let's go back to what you were saying about these Terminator machines. Now you think they don't exist?" Oobleck asked.

As she answers, it is revealed that we have been looking through a one-way mirror from an adjacent observation room. In the shadows of the observation room we see that interns from the earlier rounds, and a couple of staff psychologists. They smoke and make the occasional note.

"They don't exist. I see that now." Winter said.

"But you've told me on many occasions about how you crushed one in a hydraulic press." Oobleck said, confused.

"If I had, there would have been some evidence. They would have found something at the factory." Winter simply explains.

"I see. So, you don't believe anymore that the company covered it up?" Oobleck asked for clarification.

Winter shakes her head no.

The corporate headquarters of a mega-electronic corporation. As imposing cubist castle of black glass. And within it, not a lab coat in sight. This is strictly jeans and sneakers crowd. All young and bright. They sit at their consoles drinking Mountain Glen and changing technology as we know it. A young lab assistant rushes over to a mid-thirties man on a mission. Name tag says he's Bryant.

"Mr. Coal? The material teams want to run another test on the uh... on it." Bryant said.

The man is revealed to be Flynt Coal, a mid-thirties man who is the backbone and soul of this division.

"Yup. Come on. I'll get it." Flynt said.

Flynt produces an unusual-looking key from his pocket as they stride through the lab. Bryant having to hustle to keep up.

"Listen, Mr. Coal, I know I haven't been here that long, but I was wondering if you could tell me... I mean, if you know..." Bryant said.

"Know what?" Flynt asked.

"Well... where it came from." Bryant said.

"I asked them that question once. Know what they told me? Don't ask." Flynt said.

Flynt enters with Bryant. Flynt and a guard stand together before what looks like a high-tech bank vault. It requires two keys to open, like the launch controls in a nuclear silo. The guard and Flynt insert their keys and turn them simultaneously. Flynt then enters a passcode at a console and the vault unlocks itself with a sequence of clunks. The door swings open and Flynt enters. Bryant stays outside with the guard, who notes Flynt's name and item on a clipboard.

Flynt walks to a stainless-steel cabinet and opens it. Inside is a small artifact in a sealed container of inert gas. It - a ceramic rectangle, about the size of a domino, the color of liver. It has been shattered, painstakingly reconstructed and mounted on a metal frame.

Flynt removes the artifact and then closes the cabinet. Turns to the one next to it. Opens its door. In this cabinet is a larger object... an intricate metal hand and forearm.

At the elbow, the metal is twisted and crushed. But the forearm and hand are intact. Its metal surface scorched and discolored, it stands upright in a vacuum flask, as if saluting. This is all that remains of the Terminator Winter destroyed. Flynt stares at it, lost in thought.

We can see through the one-way mirror into the interview room where Winter is still talking with Oobleck. The other psychologists are still watching through the mirror, reviewing Winter's condition.

"So what do you think, Doctor? I've shown a lot of improvement, haven't I?" Winter asked.

"â€¦You see, Winter... here's the problem." Oobleck starts out "I know how smart you are, and I think you're just telling me what I want to hear. I don't think you really believe who you've been telling me today. I think that if we put you in minimum security, that you would just try and escape again."

We go tight on Winter's reaction. And we see that Oobleck is right. She was playing him, and it didn't work. And she knows she's fucked.

Her tone becomes a quite pleading. "You have to let me see my son. Please. He's in great danger. At least let me call him" She begs.

Oobleck pins her with a stern gaze "I'm afraid not. Not for a while. I don't see any choice but to recommend to the review board that you stay here another six months." He says as he starts putting things away.

Winter's eyes turn cold and lethal in one second. She knows she's lost. She knows this guy is just playing with her, and she leaps across the table at him. She grabs his tie and chokes him with it

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Winter cursed.

Oobleck jumps back and the attendants dive on her. She is writhing and twisting like a bobcat.

"Goddamn it, Let me go! Oobleck! You don't know what you're doing! You mother fucker! You're dead! You hear me!" Winter shouted.

Oobleck signals and the attendants drag her out. He looks at the doctors behind the glass. Shrugs.

"Model citizen." He says sarcastically.

Jaune cruises slowly on the bike, scanning. He crosses an overpass above a drainage canal and whips his head around at the sound of a dirt-bike engine.

Jaune's POV â€“ of two kids on a bike down in the canal. The image snap-zooms in. Freezes on the driver's face. "IDENT POSSITIVE" Flashes next to the blurry image of Finch.

Jaune wheels the Harley around, cutting onto a street which runs parallel to the canal. Jaune hauls ass at keep Finch in sight.

Officer Cardin has stopped two young girls in front of a 7-Eleven. He is leaning out the cruiser window and showing them the picture of Finch.

"You just missed him. He was here about like fifteen minutes ago." First Girl said as she turned the second girl on her left. "Think he said he was going to the Galleria, right?"

"Yeah." Second Girl replied.

"The Galleria?" Officer Cardin asked.

Jaune's idling Harley shakes the parking garage walls. He stops at a row of bikes near the escalators where Finch's little Honda sits proudly with the big street bikes. Jaune parks.

In a crowed video arcade. Finch is lost in an intense battle, going for a new high score at "Missile Command".

Jaune is seen walking through the crowd in slow motion, scanning. He moves with methodical purpose, knowing the target is close. We see that he is, incredibly, carrying a box of long-stem roses. Like some hopeful guy with a hot date.

Officer Cardin is moving through the flow of shoppers. The place is a zoo. He stops some kids and shows them the picture. They shrugged.

Finch losses his game and he slouches away from the game, looking for another. Completely Bored.

Officer Cardin passes the entrance of the store behind him but due to not seeing Finch, he moves on, down the concourse, out of sight.


	2. 2

Finch gets in an "Afterburner" simulator game.

The cop is pointed toward the arcade by some kids hanging out at the multi-cinema. He walks into the maze of kids engaged in synthesized combat. Cheap electronic effects blare above the crowd noise.

Finch is shooting down MiG's at Mach 2. His friend Helios slides up next to him. Taps him on the shoulder, trying to play it cool.

"Some cop is scoping for you, dude." Helios said.

Finch looks around the corner of the "Afterburner" ride. Sees the cop showing a picture to some of the kids. The kids point his way. Finch ducks just as the cop glances over. He slinks out the other side of the ride and heads for the back of the store, instinctively retreating. Winter has taught him that cops are bad news.

Cardin scans the crowded arcade. Glimpses Finch, looking back as he moves around a row of machines, and starts moving toward him. The cop is shoving through clots of kids. One of them is slammed to the floor.

Finch sprints through the arcade's back officer and storerooms. Finch emerges through a fire-door into a long corridor with connects to the parking garage. He's running full out, when around the corner ahead of him comes Jaune. Time stretches to nightmarish crawl as Finch tries to brake to a stop. Jaune reaches into the box of roses.

In slow-motion, the cold black steel of the shotgun emerges at the box falls open, the roses spilling to the floor. Jaune's boot crushes the flowers as he moves forward.

Finch, transfixed by terror, is trapped in the narrow featureless shooting gallery of the corridor. The shotgun comes up. Jaune expressionlessly strides forward. Jacks a round into the chamber, slow and fluid.

Finch looks behind him for a place to run. Sees the cop coming toward him, pulling his Beretta pistol. Incredibly, Finch realizes the cop is aiming his gun at him! Finch looks back at Jaune. He is starting into the black muzzle of the 10-gauge now. Aimed right at his head. He realizes he's screwed. Then something crazy happens...

Jaune calmly and with authority, simply tells Finch, "Get down."

They all blink in confusion.

Finch instinctively ducks. Jaune pulls the trigger. KABOOM! Cardin catches the shotgun's blast square in the chest just as he fires the pistol. The pistol's shot goes wild.

Jaune grabs Finch roughly by his jacket. Clutches the kid to his chest then spins around at the cop opens fire with the Beretta.

The "cop", who not only isn't a cop, he clearly isn't even human, pulls the trigger so fast it almost seems like a machine-pistol.

On Jaune's back, as the 9mm slugs slam into it, punching bloody holes in the motorcycle jacket.

Finch is bug-eyed with fear, but completely unscratched. Jaune's body has blocked the bullets.

The Beretta clacks empty. Jaune turns at the sound and shoves Finch into a room. Jaune turns around and takes multiple bullets, earning screams from his loved ones, before he pumps another round into Cardin. Then another. And another. Advancing a step each time he fires, he empties the shotgun into Cardin, blowing his backward down the corridor. The sound is deafening.

Then silence.

Jaune is now standing right over Cardin, reloading the shotgun. He and Finch, who is peeking out from the room, watch as Cardin, incredibly, heals its wounds instantly, sits up unharmed and gets to his feet.

Cardin then grabs the gun and struggles with Jaune for a brief moment. They appraise each other for a second.

Cardin and Jaune size each other up. Jaune moves first. He grabs Cardin in his massive hands but Cardin snaps back with a counter-grip. After about two seconds of intense slamming, the walls on both sides of the corridor have all the plaster smashed in, and the two battling machines have blasted through the wall and disappeared.

Finch, totally stunned by all this, remembers to move. He leaves the room and stumble-runs toward the parking garage.

A plate glass window explodes and Jaune crashes through to the tile floor like a sack of cement amid the screaming crowd as if he became unconscious from the quick fight.

Cardin turns without a word and heads back through the store after Finch, accelerating slowly into a loping, predatory run.

Jaune is totally still. A Japanese tourist who look suspiciously like Ren's Parents cautiously steps forward and takes a picture of the body. Jaune sits up and looks around, trying to get his bearings. He rises smoothly to his feet. All servos seem to be working fine. The tourist's camera whirs as the motor-drive runs on by itself, taking shot after shot. The owner isn't even looking through the eyepiece, he's so shocked.

Finch is frantically pumping the kick-start of his bike, scared shitless and the damned thing won't start. His hands are shaking so badly he can't find the choke. He looks up to see Cardin running down the corridor toward him.

Finch fumbles with the choke. The bike catches. He slams it in gear and spins the bike out into the main aisle of the garage.

Finch looks back... Cardin is behind him, running.

He twists the throttle and guns the little bike forward. Incredibly, Cardin is gaining. This nightmare isn't happening. Finch races out the exit ramp, and charges right into the street. Finch shoots into the busy traffic. Cuts off a big-rig tow truck. The driver swears. Hits his air horn. What the driver doesn't see is the cop, running faster than O.J. Simpson at the airport, who emerges onto the street and runs back at his truck.

The driver hears a thump as something slams against his door, then feels himself pulled right out. Cardin slides in and takes his place. The truck is still rolling along about 25 mph. Cardin accelerates after Finch without missing a beat. It can see him, up ahead, weaving through traffic.

Out of the garage entrance, Jaune roars onto the street on the Harley. He accelerates after the others.

Finch slides his bike down the service ramp faster than he's ever done it before. He races along the bottom of the canal, turning into a narrower tributary which has vertical sides. He looks back. No sign of pursuit. He slows his bike down to a stop to make sure that he wasn't pursued still.

Suddenly he sees the sun blocked out by a great shadow. The Kenworth tow-truck... big as a house, all chrome and roaring diesel engine... crashes through the fence and launches itself right into the center of the canal. It crashes down, 15 feet to the ground, going about 60, hits at an angle and tears into the concrete wall with a hideous grinding of metal. It ricochets back and forth between the walls then, bellowing like a gunshot stegosaurus, it just keeps on plowing forward, gathering speed.

Finch looks back and sees this wall of metal almost filling the narrow concrete canal and he milks every last bit of throttle the little bike has. The Kenworth is all muscle, tearing along the canal like a train in a tunnel. Its big tires send up huge sheets of muddy spray, backlit in the setting sun. It looks like some kind of demon. And it's gaining.

Above them, on the service road running parallel, Jaune is fighting to overtake them. He looks down and sees Finch with the tow-truck from Hell catching up to him. It is only about twenty feet behind him and still gaining. Jaune seeing this, pumps his shotgun and fires it at the truck, he then reloads it with one hand and fires again.

Finch hits some water and slews momentarily, loosing speed. The massive push-plate on the front of the truck slams into his back fender. Panicked, he pulls a little ahead, and all of this is happening at about sixty miles an hour. Top speed for the little dirt bike.

Jaune cuts the bike suddenly hard to the left, leaving the road. Slow-motion as Jaune, with the 700- pound Harley, sails out into space and drops into the canal. It arcs down between the truck and Finch, hitting on its wheels. It bottoms out, an explosion of sparks under the frame. Only the ultra-fast reflexes of a machine could keep the bike upright. Jaune fights for control and accelerates past the truck in the canal below.

He guns the throttle and the powerful bike roars up beside Finch's tiny Honda. Jaune sweeps the kid off his machine with one arm and swings him onto the Harley, in front of him. Finch's Honda weaves and falls, smashing instantly under thundering tires. The Harley roars ahead as it hits eighty. Ahead is an overpass, and supporting it is an abutment which bisects the canal into two channels. The Harley thunders into one channel, which is essentially a short tunnel.

Jaune reloads his shot gun once more and fires at the trucks front wheel. Cardin fights for control however the truck can't fit on either side of the canal and neither can it stop, at that speed. Tires locked, it slides on the muddy concrete and piles into the concrete abutment at seventy. Gas spills out and a simple spark ignites it causing a massive explosion.

Jaune and Finch emerge from the tunnel, looking back to see a fireball blasting through behind them as the truck's side-tanks explode. Jaune stops the Harley and Finch peers around his body to see the destruction. They hear a sound and Jaune reloads and aims in 2 seconds, waiting for Cardin to walk out. Instead a burning wheel wobbles out of the tunnel and flops in the mud. Easing themselves, Jaune revs the bike and they roar away, down the canal, disappearing around a bend.

Focusing on the fire, as a column of black smoke rises from the overpass. Smoke boils from the tunnel as well, and inside it is a solid wall of flame. A figure appears in the fire. Just an outline. Walking slowly... calmly. The figure emerges from the flames. It is human-shaped but far from human. A smooth chrome man. Not a metallic skeleton like the other Terminators, with its complex hydraulics and cables... this thing is a featureless, liquid chrome surface, bending seamlessly at knees and elbows as it walks. It reminds us of mercury. A mercury man. Its face is simple, unformed. Unruffled by thousand-degree heat, it walks toward us.

With each step detail returns. First the shape and lines of its clothing emerge from the liquid chrome surface, then finer details... buttons, facial features, ears, But it's still al chrome. With its last step, the color returns to everything. It is the cop again... handsome young face, burnt orange hair, indigo eyes. It stops and looks around.

It is a perfect chameleon. A liquid metal robot. A killing machine with the ultimate skills of mimicry for infiltration of human society. And after it looks around, it walks away.

Jaune, with Finch in front of him on the Harley, roars down the empty street. Finch cranes his neck around to get a look at the person/thing he is riding with. The image is strangely reminiscent of father/son, out for an evening ride.

Finch is still in shock from the experience of what just happened and he's just a ten-year kid, but he's also Finch Schnee who will someday rise to greatness, and we see a bit of that in him even know.

"Whoa, time out. Stop the bike! Time out, come on. Stop the bike!" Finch said, needing time to process this.

Jaune immediately complies. He leans the bike into a nearby alley. Jaune and Finch rolls into the alley and come to a stop. Finch slides off the gas tank. Jaune impassively stares at him.

Finch checks him out and then tentatively speaks "Now don't take this the wrong way, but you are a Terminator, right?"

"Yes. Cyberdyne Systems, Model 101." Jaune said as he bring out the shotgun and begin reloading.

"No way!" Finch said.

Finch move to Jaune's back and touches one of the holes on his jacket. His mind overloads as the reality of it hits him.

"Holy shit... you're really real! I mean... whoa!" He steps back. "You're, uh... like a machine underneath, right...but sort of alive outside?" Finch asked.

"I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton." Jaune said.

Finch touches Jaune's skin. Then the blood on his shirt.

"This is so intense. Okay, uh...you're not here to kill me. I figured that part out for myself. So, what's the deal?" Finch asked.

"My mission is... to protect you." Jaune stated as he put shotgun away after he finish reloading the shotgun.

"Yeah? Who sent you?" Finch asked as Jaune turns to him.

"You did. Thirty-five years from now you reprogrammed me to be your protector here, in this time." Jaune replied.

Finch gives him an amazed look. "This is deep." He said.

Back at the destruction we see Fire men and police officers at the scene. Cardin is amongst them perfectly blended in, for who would suspect a police officer there when they always show up at such scenes. He slowly gets into a police cruiser and drives off.

Finch and Jaune on the bike again, weaving through the side streets. They blend into the evening traffic. In the darkness, Jaune's wounds are not readily visible. Finch wanting to know about the other guy, speaks over the wind and asks Jaune.

"So, this other guy? He's a Terminator too, right, like you?" Finch asked.

"Not like me. A T-1000. Advanced prototype." Jaune said.

"So better than you?" Finch asked somewhat worried.

"Yes, a mimetic polyalloy." Jaune replied.

"What the hell does that mean?" Finch asks confused.

"Liquid metal." Jaune simplifies.

Finch mulls that over.

"Where we going?" He asked.

"We have to leave the city, immediately. And avoid the authorities." Jaune stated.

"Listen, Can I stop by my house?" Finch asks.

"Negative. The T-1000 will definitely try to reacquire you there." Jaune says with conviction.

"You sure?" Finch asked.

"I would." Jaune admits since he is basically a Terminator.

Finch is quickly going through his pockets for change inside of a phone booth. He has plenty of bills but no quarters.

"Look, Mercury and Cinder are dicks but I gotta warn them. Shit. You got a quarter?" Finch asks Jaune.

Jaune reaches past Finch and smashes the cover plate off the phone's cash box with the heel of his hand. A shower of change tumbles out. Jaune then hands one to Finch.

Cinder Fall picks up the kitchen phone and cradles it with her shoulder which she continues to chop vegetables with a large knife.

She answers sweetly. "Hello?"

" _Cinder? It's me_." Finch said, his voice filtered through the phone.

"Finch?" Cinder asked.

" _Yeah, it's me. Are you ok?"_ Finch asked.

"Finch? Are you alright?" Cinder asked, ignoring Finch question.

" _Yeah_." Finch answered.

"Finch. It's late, I was starting to get worried about you. You should come home so we could have dinner together. I'm making a casserole." Cinder said.

At the payphone. Finch listens, an odd look on his face. He covers the phone's mouthpiece and turns to Jaune.

Whispering to him, he says "Something's wrong. She's never this nice."

In the Fall's kitchen, Mercury comes through the back door. Just home from work. He ignores Cinder and opens the fridge, grabs a carton of milk, takes a sip, and frowns at the dog's barking.

"What the hell's the goddamn dog barking at? SHUT UP, YOU MUTT!" Mercury yelled.

Tight on Cinder as Mercury growls around the kitchen behind her, he passes out of frame next to her. Cinder switches the phone to her other hand, then... THUNK! Her free hand seems to do something out of frame. There is a gurgling, and the sound of liquid dribbling onto the floor.

At the payphone.

"The dog's really barking. Maybe it's already there. What should I do?" Finch asked.

Jaune takes the phone from Finch's hand. Cinder's voice is floating through the receiver.

" _Finch? Finch, are you okay?_ " Cinder asked.

Jaune speaks into the phone in a perfect imitation of Finch's voice, "I'm right here. I'm fine." Jaune said as he look Finch while covering the phone mouthpiece. "What's the dog's name?" He asks with his normal voice.

"Max." Finch answered with confused look on his face. Why would Jaune want to know the dog name?

Jaune nods. Speaks into the phone with Finch's voice again. "Hey, Cinder, what's wrong with Wolfy? I can hear him barking. Is he okay?"

" _Wolfy's fine, honey. Wolfy's just fine. Where are you?_ " Cinder asked.

Jaune unceremoniously hangs up the phone. Turns to Finch. "Your foster parents are dead."

Jaune heads for the bike, while Finch, shocked, stares after him.

Cinder hangs up the phone. Her expression is neutral. Calm. Pan over along her arm, which is stretched out straight from the shoulder. Partway along its length her arm has turned smoothly into something else... a metal cylinder which tapers into a sword-like spike. Now we see Mercury Fall pinned to a kitchen cabinet by the spike which has punched through his milk carton, through his mouth and exits the back of his head into the cabinet door. His eyes are glassy and lifeless.

The spike is withdrawn - SWIISHHTT! - so rapidly, Mercury is actually standing there a second before he slumps out of sight. THUMP. Cinder doesn't bat an eye as the spike smoothly changes shape and color, transforming back into a hand, and then Cinder changes rapidly into the cop we now know as Cardin. The change has liquid quality.

Off a quiet street, Jaune stands near the Harley, watching Finch pace before him. Finch's brain is calling time-out

"I need a minute here. You're telling me that this thing can imitate anything it touches?" Finch asked, panicked.

"Anything it samples by physical contact." Jaune said confirming Finch's question.

Finch thinks about that, trying to grasp their opponent's parameters.

"Get real. Like it could disguise itself as a... pack of cigarettes?" Finch asked.

"No. Only an object of equal size." Jaune said.

Finch's still reeling from meeting one Terminator, which now seems downright conventional next to the exotic new model.

"Well, why doesn't it become a bomb or something to get me?" Finch asked.

"It can't form complex machines. Guns and explosives have chemicals, moving parts. It doesn't work that way. But it can form solid metal shapes." Jaune says, calming the audience down from the scare they just had.

"Like what?"

"Knives and stabbing weapons" Jaune said. Cardin opens the back door and approaches the big German Shepherd, which slinks away from it, barking in fear. Cardin walk right into close up. Reaches down, out of frame. We hear that sickening THUNK followed by a shrill YELP. Then Cardin's hand snaps up into frame holding a bloody dog collar. The tag reads "MAX". Cardin nods thoughtfully. He then heads back to the house.


	3. 3

Close on a black & white photograph. The image is a nightmare from the past. It is a surveillance camera still-frame from the L.A. police station where the first Terminator made such an impression in 1984. We see the blurry forms of the cop frozen in the emergency lights of a burning corridor. A black-clad figure stands at the end of the corridor. The guy has short-cropped hair and dark glasses. An AR-80 assault rifle in one hand, and a 12-gauge in the other - holding them both like toy pistols. Another photo is slapped on top of the first. Another still-frame blow-up is placed over the last. Terminator looms in closeup.

A Detective Weathersby said, "These were taken at the West Highland police station in 1984. You were there." He tells Winter.

The photos are lying on the table in front of Winter, placed there by Detective Weathersby. His partner Det. Mosssberg, and Dr. Oobleck, sit at the table as well. Two uniformed cops, plus Douglas, stand by the door. Winter stares listlessly at the top photo. She's withdrawn, haggard... drugged looking.

"He killed seventeen police officers that night. Recognize him?" Mossberg asked.

Weathersby slaps another black-and-white eight-by-ten on the table. A closeup of Jaune taken by the Japanese tourist at the mall. It's the same face.

"This one was taken by a Japanese tourist today." Mossberg said.

Winter doesn't react. It's hard to tell what she's thinking. Whether she's given up hope or is just in a drugged stupor.

"Ms. Schnee, we know you know who this guy is. Look, I just sat here and told you that your son's missing. His foster parents have been murdered, and we know this guy's involved. Doesn't that mean anything to you. Don't you care?" Weathersby asked.

Winter stares up at him. A cold and empty stare. He glances at Oobleck. Then at his partner.

"We're wasting our time." Mossberg said.

One of the uniformed cops opens the door and Mossberg strides into the hall. Weathersby and the two uniforms follow him out, with Oobleck right behind.

"Sorry, gentleman." Oobleck apologized.

Tight on Winter, slumped under the bright lights. Totally out of it. Then we see her hand, creeping along the edge of the table toward the stack of photos. She slips off the paper clip binding the stills together and hides it between her fingers. Douglas jerks her up by the arms and leads her out.

"See. We spent a lot of time in Nicaragua... places like that." Finch says to Jaune as they rest by the motorcycle.

"For a while she was with this crazy ex-Green Beret guy, running guns. Then there were some other guys. She'd shack up with anybody she could learn from. So, then she could teach me how to be this great military leader. Then she gets busted and it's like...sorry kid, your mom's a psycho. Didn't you know? It's like everything I'd been brought up to believe was just made-up bullshit. I hated her for that!" He looks up, "But everything she said was true. She knew. And nobody believed her. Not even me." He stands up, "Listen, we gotta get her out of there."

"Negative. The T-1000's highest probability for success now would be to copy Winter Schnee and wait for you to make contact with her." Jaune said.

"Great. What happens to her?" Finch asked sarcastically.

Jaune, as always, replies it matter-of-factly. "Typically, the subject being copied is terminated."

"Shit! Why didn't you tell me? We gotta go right now!" Finch shouted.

"Negative. She is not a mission priority." Jaune said.

"Well fuck you, she's a priority to me!" Finch yelled.

Finch strides away. Jaune goes after him and grabs him arm. Finch struggles against the grip. Which doesn't do him much good.

"Hey, goddammit! What's your problem?" Finch yelled.

Jaune starts dragging Finch back to the bike. Finch spots a couple of college-age slab-o-meat jock-types across the street and starts yelling to them.

"Help! HELP! I'm being kidnapped! Get this psycho off of me!" Finch shouted, begging for help.

The two jocks start toward him.

"Let go of me!" Finch yelled at Jaune in outrage.

To his surprise, Jaune's hand opens so fast Finch falls right on his butt. He looks up at the open hand.

"Why the hell did you do that?" Finch asked

"Because you told me to." Jaune said.

"What?" Finch asked as he stand up and stares at him in amazement as he realizes. "You have to do what I say, huh?!" He asks smugly.

"That's one of my mission parameters." Jaune said.

"Prove it. Stand on one foot." Finch ordered.

Jaune expressionlessly lifts one leg. Finch grins.

"Cool! My own Terminator. This is great!"

The two guys, one of them a gorilla Faunus, get there and look at Jaune standing there calmly with one leg up in the air. This big guy in black leather and dark glasses, standing like a statue.

"You okay, kid?" First Jock asked.

Finch turns to him. No longer needing to be rescued.

"Take a hike, bozo." Finch said.

"See, let's get out of here." Second Jock said.

"What?" First Jock asked as he turned to Finch. "Fuck you, you little dipshit!"

"Dipshit?" Finch asked as he whispered to Jaune. "Put your leg down."

Jaune put his leg down as Finch turned his attention back to the Jocks.

"Did you call moi a dipshit?!" He turns to Jaune, "Grab this guy." Finch said.

Jaune complies instantly, hoisting him one-handed by the guys hair. The guy's legs are pinwheeling.

"Now who's the dipshit, you jock douchebag?" Finch asked smugly.

Immediately, things get out of hand. The guy's friend jumps behind Jaune and tries to grab him in a full nelson. Jaune throws the first guy across the hood of a car, grabs the second by the hand, whips out his .45 in a quick blur, and aims the muzzle at the guy's forehead.

Unlike the bikers at that bar, the heroes didn't want this guy to get hurt like his friend.

Finch pushes Jaune's arm with a yell as he pulls the trigger. Finch's weight is just enough to deflect the gun a few inches. The guy flinched, stunned by the K-BOOM next to his ear. He stares, shocked. Pissing himself. Finch is freaking out, too.

He screams at Jaune. "Put the gun down NOW!"

Jaune sets the .45 on the sidewalk. Finch scoops it up fast then turns to the shocked civilians, who can't believe what just happened.

"Get out of here!" Finch demanded.

They do. Fast. Finch grabs Jaune by the arm and tugs him toward the bike. Finch still holds the gun, reluctant to give it back.

"Monty Oum, you were gonna kill that guy!" Finch said.

"Of course. I'm a Terminator." Jaune simply said.

Finch stares at him. Having your own Terminator just became a little bit less fun to him.

"Listen to me very carefully, okay? You're not a Terminator anymore, alright? You got that? You can't just go around killing people!" Finch said.

"Why?" Jaune asked.

"Whattaya mean, why? Cause you can't!" Finch exclaimed.

"Why?"

"You just can't, okay? Trust me on this." Finch said.

Jaune doesn't get it. Finch just stares at him, frightened at what just almost happened. He gets a glimpse of the responsibility that comes with power.

"Look, I'm gonna go get my mom, and I order you to help me." Finch ordered as he hands the .45 back to Jaune, who puts it away.

At a guard shack, A bored security guard glances up as an LAPD black-and-white pulls up. He raises the barricade and nods at the T-1000/Cardin as it passes.

Douglas inches up the last of Winter's restraints. Then he leans over her... looking down. Even wrecked as she is, we see the beauty in her face. He bends down and we think he's going to kiss her.

Instead he runs his tongue across her face like a dog would. She seems not to even see him. Her dull eyes past him. He can't provoke a reaction. Even here, strapped down, the two of them alone, she gives him no superiority. He smirks and leaves. We hear the sound of his night-stick tapping its way down the corridor, growing fainter.

Winter's eyes snap suddenly alert. There is intensity and resolve in them. She slips the paper clip out from between her fingers and awkwardly spreads it open into a straight piece of wire. With slow, painful concentration she moves it toward the lock of the restraints that bind her wrists to the bed at her sides.

Outside the screen focuses on the restraint lock as it unlatches... successfully picked by Winter's paper clip. This is not an easy thing to do but Winter taught herself a lot of things in her years of hiding. Winter, her hands free, sits up and releases the Velcro straps on her feet. She rolls off the bed and we see her in a whole new light. She is totally alert, almost feral in her movements.

A night nurse types at a desk nearby. She looks up at the sound of footsteps and sees Cardin walking toward her.

"You have a Winter Schnee here?" Cardin asks the night nurse.

She assumes he's with the other cops, so she smiles.

"Running late, aren't you? Your friends are on their way out now..." The night nurse said as she looks at a monitor showing Cardin and the other cops. When she turns back to the window, Cardin's no longer there. She goes to the counter and leans out to see if he's at the coffee machine or someplace. No. Reception is empty. And so is the long corridor beyond. She frowns. Weird.

Oobleck comes through the solenoid door with Mossberg and Weathersby, the two uniformed cops, and the hospital security guard. The guard retrieves his 9mm pistol from a lock-out box behind the night desk.

Oobleck faces him and said, "Lewis, see these gentlemen out and then lock up for the night."

The security guard nods. Oobleck goes back into the secure area of the hospital and the cops walk down the long corridor to the main doors. No sign of Cardin. Mossberg and the other cops exit, and the guard locks the door behind them.

The guard walks slowly back along the long corridor. The hall is dark, with the light at the night desk far ahead like a sanctuary. His footsteps ring hollowly on the tile floor while His keys jingle. As he takes a step on a single tile, the guard's feet continue forward. An instant later the floor starts to move.

It shivers and bulges upward like a liquid mass, still retaining the two-tone checkerboard of the tile. It hunches up silently into a quivering shadow in the darkness past the guard. Up ahead we hear typing. The night nurse has her back to us, working. The guard stops at a coffee machine and makes himself a cup

"Hey, Gwen, you want some coffee?" Lewis asked.

"No, thanks. How 'bout a beer?" She asks jokingly.

"Yeah, right!" Lewis said.

Behind him the fluid mass as reaches six feet of height and begins to resolve rapidly into a human figure. It loses the color and texture of the tile and becomes... Lewis.

The guard, now finished with making it, looks at the cup to see if he won a prize from the cup's promo.

"Hey, I got a full house!" Lewis said to Gwen.

"That's good, Lewis." Gwen said.

"Must be my lucky day." Lewis said to himself.

The T-1000/Lewis's feet are the last to form, the last of the "liquid floor" pulling in to form shiny black guard shoes. The shoes detach with a faint sucking sound from the real floor as the T-1000/Lewis takes its first step.

The real Lewis spins at the sound of footsteps to see... himself. He has one deeply disturbing moment to consider the ramifications of that. Then he sees his double calmly raise its hand and, inexplicably, points his right index finger directly at the real guard's face, about a foot away. In a split second, the finger spears out, elongating into a thin steel rod which snaps out like a stiletto, slamming into the guard's eye.

It punches into the corner of the eye, past the eyeball like a trans- orbital lobotomy tool, and emerges from the back of the guard's skull. Life quietly empties from the guard's face. He is dead weight, hanging from the rod/finger with suddenly reacts - SSSNICK. As the guard slumps, the T-1000 takes his weight easily with one hand and walks him, like it's carrying a suit on a hanger, back toward the night desk. The wounds are so tiny, no blood drips onto the floor.

Cardin moves past, dragging the unseen guard toward a closet down the hall from the night receiving station. T-1000/Lewis removes the Browning High-Power pistol and the keys from the real guard's belt, then stuffs the body into the utility closet.

Douglas the attendant is tapping his stick along the wall like he does every night on his rounds. He shines a little mag-light in the windows of the cells as he passes, barely slowing. He rounds the corner. His footsteps echo in the dark hallway. The tip of the stick hits the wall. Tap, tap, tap... getting closer to Winter's cell. He stops at the door.

He is about to shine his light in when he notices that a utility closet across the hall is open. He goes to shut it, absently flicking his light into the dark closet. He notices something strange among the buckets and cleaning supplies. A mop lies on the floor, with its handle snapped off about halfway up. The other half is missing.

Douglas ponders this for half a second, then hears a sound behind him and spins around. The sound he heard was Winter's cell door. The missing two feet of the mop handle fill his vision as it CRACKS viciously across the bridge of his nose.

250 pounds of doughy attendant hit the floor like a sack of cement. Winter slams the makeshift baton down expertly across the back of his head, bouncing him off the linoleum. Lights out, Douglas. She drags him into her cell and locks him in with his own keys. Then swaps her mop-handle for his nice heavy night-stick.

Winter moves down the dark corridor, cat-stepping in her bare feet. She holds the baton like a pro, laid back along the forearm, police- style. She looks dangerous.

The guard walks down a simple corridor continuing his search. He looks at the doors and the camera moves to show the numbers of the inmate doors. When the camera moves back, it shows Cardin, having changed back to his original form.

Cuts to show Jaune and Finch on their motorcycle, like two men on a mission. One of them being a child and the other a killer robot.

Moving toward the nurse's station. We hear Oobleck's voice, reviewing medication with the night attendant. Oobleck, yawning, looks at his watch. He turns to go but Winter is there. She tosses the keys to the attendant. Due to reflexes, he caught the keys, however that left him open to Winter beating him down with the baton WHAP-WHAP-WHAP! You can barely see the thing she's swinging it so fast. The guys goes down.

Oobleck lunges for the alarm button and she cracks down hard on his arm. He cries out and grabs his wrist. She then smacks him behind the knees expertly with the baton. His legs buckle and he drops to his knees with his chin on the desk.

Moving rapidly, she whips open a medication drawer and grabs a syringe. She jams it into the orderly's butt and fires the whole shot. Still holding the empty syringe, she sees what she needs next. They keep the toxic cleaning supplies in here to keep the inmates from drinking Drano.

"You broke my arm!" Oobleck said.

"There're 215 bones in the human body, motherfucker. That's one. Now don't move!" Winter shouted.

She grabs a plastic jug of Liquid Plum'r and slams it down on the desk inches from Oobleck's eyes. She jams the empty syringe into the plastic jug, then draws back the plunger. The syringe fills with blue liquid.

"What are you gonna do?" Oobleck asked in pain.

Jaune and Finch are approaching the guard gate on the Harley. They can see the guard inside looks up at the sound of the engine.

"Now remember, you're not gonna kill anyone, right?" Finch asked.

"Right." Jaune said.

Finch looks at him. He's not convinced.

"Swear." Finch said.

"What?" Jaune asked.

"Just put up your hand and say, "'I swear I won't kill anyone.'" Finch said as he holds his hand up, like he's being sworn in.

Jaune stares at Finch. Then he mimics the gesture.

"I swear I will not kill anyone." Jaune sworn.

Finch, feeling better, allows Jaune to go forward. Jaune stops the bike and gets off. The guard, sensing trouble, has his gun drawn as he comes out of the shack.

Jaune walks toward him drawing his .45 smoothly. BLAM! He shoots the guard accurately in the thigh. The guy drops, screaming and clutching his leg.

"What the hell are you doing?" Finch asked.

"You son of a bitch! You shot me!" Guard shouted in pain but is ignored.

Jaune kicks the guard's gun away, then smashes the phone in the shack with his fist. He break the window with his elbow and pushes the button to raise the gate and bend down to get few magazines from the guard and walks back to the bike.

"He'll live." Jaune tells Finch.

Jaune climbs onto the bike. They drive toward the hospital, heading down an ambulance ramp to an underground receiving area.

The attendants at the security checkpoint look up at the monitor as someone enter the corridor. They see Winter, holding Oobleck at syringe-point.

"Son of a Bitch!" The female Rabbit Faunus exclaims as they watch Winter moving forward.

Winter speaks to them through an intercom on the wall. Her voice comes through the speaker. "Open it! Or he'll be dead before he hits the floor."

The attendants' adrenaline levels just went off the scale. The first attendant shakes his head no. The amperage here is really high. The Woman keys the intercom switch.

"There's no way out, Schnee. Let him go." The Rabbit Faunus said.

Oobleck's face is the color of suet.

"It won't work, Winter. You're no killer. I don't believe you'd do it." Oobleck said.

"You're already dead, Oobleck. Everybody here dies. You know I believe that. So, don't fuck with me!" she says, her voice in a deadly cold hiss.

Oobleck, now scared, yelled "Open the goddamn door!"

The attendants look at one another. One of them hits the solenoid button. The far door unlocks. Winter pushes Oobleck ahead of her. The nearer, barred door must be unlocked manually.

"Step back!" She exclaims

They do, and she faces both of them.

"Get in the office, Down on the floor! Now!" She ordered.

They comply.

"Not you, open the door." She commands one of them as they move forward.

She comes through with Oobleck, giving them a wide berth. Starts backing down the hall away from them, still holding her hostage. She's actually pulling this off.

But she can't see, it a third orderly waiting just around the corner. He's poised, ready to jump her when she comes abreast of him.

On Winter backing up, she reaches the corner. The third attendant lunges, grabbing her syringe-hand. Winter spins on the orderly and catches him across the throat with the nightstick. He loses interest fast, dropping to his knees and gagging.

Oobleck pulls away, screaming at the top of his lungs "Get her!"

They scramble up as Winter takes off like a shot around the corner. One of them hits the panic button and alarms begin to sound.

In the isolation ward, the T-1000 is looking in at a very stoned attendant inside the nurses' station when the alarms shriek through the halls. It reaches into its chest and pulls out the 9mm pistol. Heads for the security entrance.

In another corridor in the maze of the vast hospital, Winter flies on past, her bare feet slapping on the cold tiles. The orderlies charge after her. She's like an animal trapped in a maze. She turns the corner, glancing off the wall, and sprints on without slowing. She reaches a steel door. She tries it. Locked. Footsteps like a drum solo behind her. She fumbles with Douglas' keys, breathing hard. Jams the master in. The orderlies are bearing down on her at full tilt. Winter gets the door open, and dives through. She then slams it shut and turns a deadbolt knob just as the first orderly grabs the latch on the other side. He's too late.

Winter sees them beyond the window, fumbling with their keys. Winter is in another sally-port corridor. A jail-cell type barred door is between her and the corridors of the ward beyond. She sprints to the walls of bars, jams her key into the door. She unlocks and pulls open this door just as she hears the latch of the one she just came through being unlocked. She flings herself frantically through the barred door as the first orderly comes through behind her. She slams the bars shut. CLANG. Her keys are dangling from the lock on the other side from her. The orderly is racing at her, white-lipped with rage.

She reaches back through the bars, turns the key, and purposefully snaps it off in the lock. An instant later the big orderly slams against the door, grabbing through the bars for her as she dances back just out of reach. He lunges against the steel bars, unbelievably pissed off.

Winter takes off running, looking back at the frustrated orderlies. They're shouting at each other, unable to fit their keys into the lock.

Oobleck shouts at them "Go around, goddamn it! Go around!"

On Winter as she sees the elevators ahead. She's home free. She presses the elevator button and waits, trying to calm her beating heart. A ding down the corridor signals to the elevator there. At a full-tilt sprint, she's nearly there, but when the elevator doors part... Jaune steps out... his head swivels to face her.

Winter stumbles, stricken by the image from her worst nightmares. Her eyes go wide as momentum carries her forward. Her bare feet slip on the slick tile. She slams to the floor, staring up at the leather-clad figure with the shotgun.

She loses all semblance of courage and some of her sanity. She's not even aware that she is screaming, or what would be screaming if she could get the breath to do it. In slowed-down dreamtime, Winter scrambles back along the floor like a crab, spinning and clawing her way to her feet along the wall. She runs like the wind, like in her nightmare. If she looked back, she would have seen Finch step warily out of the corridor behind Jaune. Finch, however, catches a glimpse of the fleeing Winter and figures out instantly what happened.

"Mom! Wait!" He calls out

Winter doesn't hear. She has clicked fully into her own nightmare. They take off running after her.

She is pelting down the long corridor, back the way she came. As she reaches an intersection with a cross-corridor a white-clad figure blurs from that corridor. The orderly hits her in a flying tackle. She skids across the floor, shrieking and struggling. The other two orderlies leap into the fray.

"No! Help me! Goddamn it, it's gonna kill us all!" Winter yelled in fear.

"Help her!" Finch shouted at Jaune.

"Wait here." Jaune said.

She is shouting, pleading, trying to get them to understand what is coming. They grab her thrashing arms and legs. They don't even look where the out-of-control woman is pointing... back along the corridor.

"Help, hold her Down!" They cry out, and the Rabbit Faunus comes in to help restrain her as well. They have pinned her to the cold tiles, a ring of faces above her. Oobleck leans down to her, holding a syringe with a heavy dose of trank. Winter cranes her neck and sees the dark silhouette of Jaune coming up behind them. It is exactly her nightmare. She screams in utter hopelessness.

Jaune, holding the shotgun in one hand, reaches down and grabs one of the orderlies with his other hand. He hurls the 200-pound guys against the window of safety glass and is caught before a two-story fall by the outer steel bars. SMACK! He drops to the floor. Jaune grab the second orderlies and throw at the office door, shattering the glass and knocking him out. The third orderlies try to hit the intruder but Jaune hit him in the stomach with the shotgun and push him to the wall, knocking him out as well.

The Security woman seeing this, strikes a right cross across Jaune's face, breaking his sunglasses in the process.

Jaune, not affected by it, slowly moves his head back.

He grabs the woman's face and lightly pushes her away. Although 'lightly' is relative, as she sailed back 20 feet and got knocked out from her head hitting the tile floors.

Oobleck looks into Jaune's expressionless face as he took off his broken sunglasses and look at Winter on the floor. And it hit him. Winter was right... this guy isn't human. He feels the fabric of reality crumbling.

Winter blinks, staring up at the figure looming over her. Finch kneels next to her.

"Mom, are you okay? Mom?!" Finch asks her.

She looks from Jaune to Finch. Back to Jaune. Is this a nightmare? Or has she finally gone truly mad?

Incredibly, Jaune politely reaches his hand down to her, offering to help her up. The last thing she ever expected to see.

"Come with me if you want to live." Jaune said.

"It's okay, Mom. He's here to help. It okay." Finch said to calm her down.

Winter, is a daze, takes the huge hand in her shaking fingers. Jaune lifts her to her feet.

Jaune turns and sees Cardin standing thirty feet away on the other side of the walls of bars. The other turns to follow Jaune's gaze.

The T-1000 walks forward, reaching the bars. It stops for just a second, and then it's body divides like jello around the bars. As it squeezes itself through like metal playdough, its surface reforms perfectly on our side. We see it deform and squeeze through like a viscous paste forced past an obstacle.

There is a CLANK and the screen shows that the guard's gun has caught against the bars... the only solid object. The T-1000 turns its wrist and tries again, slipping the gun endwise through the gap.

Jaune grabs Finch and pushes him behind him towards Winter.

"Go! Run!" Jaune said.

Cardin walks toward them, opening fire with the Browning Hi-Power. Jaune straight-arms the 12-guage like a pistol and fires. Jaune is hammered by several slugs, and Cardin is cratered by three buckshot's hits. It staggers but comes on. In the craters we see bright mercury before they close and reseal, disappearing in a second.

Jaune turns around and breaks into a run. Ahead, Winter is already at the elevator. Jaune piles in and Finch slaps the button for "Garage Level". The doors start to close. Cardin charges at them, rapid firing the Browning. The rounds hit the steel doors as they close. Cardin keeps pumping them at the closing gap. Inside, they see the backside of the doors denting with the hits that are punching holes in the other side. The Browning locks open, empty. Cardin drops it without a glance back. The doors close. K-WHAM! The T-1000 hits them a split second later.

The elevator hasn't moved yet. SSWWIKK! A sword-like blade rams through in between the doors. Winter grab Finch and move away from the doors as the blade then slowly morphs into 2 crow bars, forcing them open.

Jaune jams the shotgun through the widening gap. Punches the muzzle right into Cardin's face and - BOOM! We get a glimpse of the T-1000's head blown apart by the blast. It is hurtled back. The doors close. The car descends.

"What is this, what the fucks going on?" Winter asked as she is just outright confused now.

On Cardin, outside the elevator. Its head, which is blown apart into two doughy masses lying on the shoulders, reforms quickly. Soon there is no trace of the injury. It sees the closed door and jams its hands between them, its fingertips becoming pry-bars. It pulls the doors apart with inhuman strength and leaps into the open shaft.

In the elevator. Our trio hears a loud thump on the roof. Jaune, reloading the shotgun, looks up. Winter grabs the .45 from his waistband and aims it at the ceiling. CLANGG! a sword like shaft punches through the ceiling and spears down four feet into the elevator car. It is inches from Winter's face.

She opens fire, BAM-BAM-BAM - right through the roof. Lightning-fast the lance withdraws and thrusts down again, slashing Jaune's jacket, and missing Finch by inches. Jaune chambers a round and K-BOOM! the 12-guage opens a hole in the ceiling.

Jaune rocks out in a fury of firing/cocking/firing as the metal shafts slash down again and again. Winter yells in pain as one of them slices open her upper arm.

The doors open. Winter pulls Finch out as soon as the gap is wide enough. They emerge into the basement. We see a blue-and-white hospital security car coming towards them, screeching down the parking lot. Without breaking stride Winter runs right at the car. It skids to a shrieking halt. She's in the guy's face with the .45 in both hands.

"Out of the car!" Winter shouted.

The patrol guy is thinking what he can try when BLAM! she puts a round through the glass next to his head.

"RIGHT NOW!"

The door opens and the guy is coming out with his hands up as Jaune arrives. The cyborg flings the rent-a-cop out of the way and slides behind the wheel.

We see Cardin moving like playdough down into the elevator and open the doors as it slowly forms back to its normal shape. Winter gets Finch into the back seat and dives into the front passenger seat as Jaune slams the car into reverse and punches it, lighting up the tires on the slick ramp. Jaune hands the shotgun over his shoulder to Finch and tells him to reload. Finch pulls some shells from the pocket of his army jacket and starts feeding them in. Jaune powers backward up the ramp, scraping along one wall, barely in control. Cardin is gaining.

Jaune hands Winter another magazine for the .45. She snatches it, drops the other out, and slaps in the new one. She cocks the slide. The car backs along the service driveway toward the security gate. Finch hands the shot gun back to Jaune. He leans out the window and takes aim at the pursuer. Cardin's face is right in the headlights. Jaune fires, blowing a hole in its shoulder. Shiny liquid metal visible in the hole, which then closes. Winter, half out the passenger window, opens fire. The car crashes backward through the security barricade.

"Hang on." Jaune said calmly as he cuts the wheel hard. The car slews into a reverse 180, swapping ends with a screech. Cardin is almost on them. Jaune punches it, the car accelerating forward. Cardin leaps, and lands on the trunk. Its hand, shaped as a metal crowbar, slams down through the trunk lid. Feet dragging on the pavement, it slams its other hand down, punching another metal hook into the trunk lid, pulling itself up.

Jaune turns to Winter and simply said, "Drive."

Jaune heaves himself half out the driver's window. Winter slaps her foot down on the throttle and steers from the passenger side. Cardin, fully on the car now, holds on with one hook-hand while it slams the other into the back window, sweeping away the glass and missing Finch by inches as he ducks. It draws back for another swing, lunging forward as Jaune whips the shotgun over the roof of the car. Fires point-blank and hits Cardin's arm just above the "hand" which anchors it to the car. The 12-guage blows the arm apart, severing the hook-hand. Cardin tumbles backward off the accelerating car, earning laughs from the students. Finch looks out the back window, his eyes wide. He sees the T-1000 roll to his feet and continue running. But he's dropping way behind now. Winter has the car floored and the liquid-metal killer won't catch them on foot. Finch watches, in awe, as the "crowbar hand", stuck into the trunk right in front of him reverting to the neutral polyalloy. The gray metal then slides off the trunk of the car and falls onto the road to lie there in a quivering blob. The car speeds off into the night.

Cardin, walking now, coming right up into closeup, watching the taillights recede. It looks down on the liquid metal blob. Next to it is the T-1000's shiny cop shoe. The mercury blob crawls and rejoins the main mass, disappearing into the "shoe".

A ghost car blasts out of the darkness on a long stretch of moonlight highway. Headlights off, the hospital security car punches a hole in the wind.

Inside the speeding car, the energy is still high. The air is blowing in the shattered windows as Jaune drives the car. Winter looks at Jaune, still not quite believing this is happening. But this is a different Winter than the waitress of 1984. She spends only a second or two dealing with the unbelievable. Then she turns to Finch in the back seat.

"You okay?" Winter asks Finch.

He nods.

"Can you see anything?" Finch asks Jaune.

Jaune's POV. A monochrome image of the highway lit bright as day.

"I can see everything." Jaune replies in a matter-of-fact tone.

Finch simply responds with "Cool."

Winter reaches for Finch and everyone thinks she's going to hug him.

She starts to rub her hands over him, and they realize she's checking for injuries, very clinically the way a vet checks a dog for broken bones. He pulls away from her. He hates her always checking him, treating him like he might break, like some piece of rare china.

"I said I was okay." Finch said.

Winter looks at him, exasperated and stern.

Winter "Finch, it was stupid of you to go there."

Finch stares at her, surprised.

"Goddamnit, Finch, you have to be smarter than that. You almost got yourself killed. What were you thinking! You can't risk yourself, not even for me, do you understand? Your too important!" Winter lectures.

His chin quivers. He's a tough kid, but all he really wants is for her to love him. He hasn't had enough years on the planet yet to be the man of steel she demands.

"I... had to get you out of the place." Finch said.

"I can take care of myself." Winter said.

His face crumples. He starts to cry.

Jaune turns and sees the water leaking from his eyes. It doesn't make any sense to him.

"What wrong with your eyes?" Jaune asked.

"Nothing." Finch answered as he turns away, ashamed. Winter lets her breath out, realizing how keyed up she is. She turns to Jaune, giving him a wary once over.

"So, what's your story?" She asks him.

Back at the medical asylum, Cardin walks towards the scene. As he gets closer, a Bike cop about to leave sees him.

"Hey, Everything okay?" Bike cop asked.

Cardin seeing him said, "Everything's fine. Thanks for checking." As he is about to leave, he looks at the bike and says to the cop "Say, that's a nice bike."


	4. 4

A rundown gas station with a buzzing neon sign and no one around. They pull into the drive and slowly cruise past the empty office. A sign in the window says CLOSED SUNDAYS. They continue around the building to the garage's back door. At the garage door, Jaune breaks the lock on the roll-up door and raises it. Winter pulls the security car in out of sight.

Tight on a first-aid kit from the office, plus some not-so-oily rags, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a few small tools, and other makeshift odds and ends. Jaune's hand comes into shot. He sets down a bloody rag and picks up a clean one. Winter sits on an empty crate, with Jaune is beside her, suturing her wound with some fine wire from the winding of an alternator. Using a pair of needle-nose pliers he draws the wire through her pale skin with a delicate hand.

Winter, not really trusting Jaune or in her mind, The killer Terminator, simply asks "Look, do you even know what you're doing?"

"I have detailed files on human and Faunus anatomy." Jaune replies.

Winter stares into his face, inches away, fighting the pain. She doesn't like him being this close to her to begin with, let alone carving on her.

"I'll bet. Makes you a more efficient killer, right?" Winter asked sarcastically.

"Correct." Jaune said.

Now showing Jaune's back, the leather jacket is riddled with bullet holes. Winter and Finch help pull it off, revealing Jaune's broad, muscular back underneath, which had many drooling at the sight despite the blood and holes. Finch and Winter stare in amazement. There are at least twenty bullet holes in him. Back. Arms. Legs. Fortunately, they're all 9mm. The holes are small and the damage cosmetic.

"Does it hurt when you get shot?" Finch asked.

"I sense injuries. The data could be called pain." Jaune replies.

Winter starts washing the bullet holes in his broad back with alcohol.

"Will these heal up?" Winter asked.

Jaune nods. She reaches into the bloody wounds with pliers and finds the copper-jacketed bullets, flattening against the armored endoskeleton. Pulls them out. They CLINK one by one into a glass, with each impact causing a few to flinch.

"That's good. Because if you can't pass for human, you won't be much good to us." Winter said.

She concentrates on removing the slugs. CLINK. CLINK.

"How long do you live? I mean, last?" Finch asked.

"A hundred and twenty years on my existing power cell." Jaune said.

Winter nods, pulling out another slug. CLINK. The glass nearly full of flattened bullets. She begins to sew the holes closed with a few wire sutures. Finch watches in quiet amazement, the two warriors calmly fixing each other.

"Can you learn things that you're not programed with? So, you can be... you know. More human. Not such a dork all the time." Finch bluntly asked.

Jaune turns towards him. "My CPU is a neural-net processor... a learning computer. But Skynet presets the switch to "read-only" when we're sent out alone."

"Doesn't want you to do too much thinking, huh?" Winter asks cynically.

"No."

"Can we reset the switch?" Finch asked as Winter and Jaune turns towards him at that question.

The scene changes to an x-acto knife cutting into Jaune's scalp at the base of his skull. His voice calmly directs Winter as she spreads the bloody incision and locates the maintenance port for the CPU in the chrome skull beneath.

"Rotate the 2 locking cylinders counter-clockwise" Jaune said.

She wipes away the blood and uses the garage-mechanic's air tools to unscrew the port cover.

"Now open the port cover."

She grabbed the garage-mechanic's air tools to unscrew the port cover.

"Good, now remove the shock dampeners separate. You should then have access to the CPU"

Cut to Jaune's POV, as he watches her work in a mirror they've taken from the washroom. Winter and Finch are standing behind him.

"Hold the CPU by its base tab, and pull."

Following the instructions, she reaches in with a pair of tweezers and pulls - there is a burst of static and the screen goes black.

Focusing on Finch and Winter looking at what she has removed. A reddish- brown ceramic rectangle with a connector on one end. About the size and shape of a domino. On close inspection it appears to be made up of small cubes connected together. It is identical to the shattered one in the vault at Cyberdyne Systems. Now we know it is that Flynt Coal values so highly. The brain of a Terminator.

Finch walks around Jaune and looks at his face. Eyes open, he is completely inert. Dead. Many of Jaune's friends shivered seeing that. Finch lifts a huge hand. The dead servos whine sullenly as he forces them. It's like rigor mortis. He releases the hand and it stays in the lifted position. Winter examines the CPU chip then she sets it on the worktable and picks up a small sledgehammer.

"Can you see the pin switch?" Finch asked her still looking at Jaune. When he looks at her, he realizes what she is about to do. Dives at her as the sledge is whistling down.

"No!"

He slaps his hand down over the chip. Winter barely stops the sledge before smashing his fingers.

"Out of the way, Finch!" Winter demands.

"No! Don't kill him!" Finch exclaimed.

" _It_ , Finch. Not him. _It_." Winter says with venom.

"Alright, _it_! We need _it_!" Finch agrees just to ease her down as he keeps his hand right where it is.

"Listen to me, We're better off by ourselves." Winter said.

"But it's the only proof we have to the future and war and all that." Finch said.

"Maybe, I don't trust it!" Winter exclaimed as she looks at Jaune.

"But he's my friend alright!" Finch exclaimed.

"These things are hard to kill, Finch, believe me, I know. And if something goes wrong, we may never have this opportunity again so MOVE!" Winter demands as her eyes show a feral quality to them.

"Look, Mom, if I'm supposed to ever be this great leader, you should start listening to _my_ leadership ideas once in a while. Cause if my own mother won't, how do you expect anyone else to." Finch said in a calming voice.

He removes his hand and takes a step back.

Winter thinks for just a moment, with her hammer raised in the air, slams it onto the work bench.

The camera reveals that she hit next to the chip, leaving a very large dent beside it.

"…Fine, we'll play it your way." Winter said in a defeated tone.

Finch palms the chip and studies it minutely.

Jaune's vision flares back to life in a burst of static. The image forms. Winter and Finch stands behind him in the mirror.

"Was there a problem?" Jaune asked.

Finch glances sheepishly at Winter, then smiles at Jaune.

"No problem. None whatsoever." Finch said.

Finch is seen sleeping, lying on a pile of rags next to a stack of tires. The lights are off. Winter sits nearby, cross-legged, he back against the wall. The .45 is cradles in her lap. She looks weary, but she won't allow herself to sleep with Jaune present. By the office windows, in a slash of moonlight, is Jaune. He stands silent and still, watching the night. Only his eyes move, tracking with the occasional car passing on the road. His figure silhouetted and still.

Now daylight streams in the dusty windows. Jaune has not moved. An ever-faithful machine sentinel. He turns at a sound. Finch stirs, waking up. He squints into the sunlight. Winter is still awake. She gets up, wincing at the pain in her arm.

Finch and Jaune walks to an old car parked behind the garage. The day is clear but windy. Dust devils chase themselves behind the place. The pickup is locked but Jaune breaks the side window with his fist and opens the door. He and Finch climb in. In the car, Jaune has this trick, which you could do too if you had servo-driven steel fingers, where he smashes the cowl around a steering column with one blow from the palm of his hand. When it shatters, he strips it away with a single move, and then turns the stub of the lock-mechanism with his fingertips. This starts the vehicle. It takes about three seconds.

In fact, he does it so quickly, the car is running by the time Finch flips down the sun visor. A set of keys drops out and Finch catches them. Dangles them in front of Jaune's eyes.

"Are we learning yet?" Finch asks jokingly.

Winter comes out. She's found a mechanic's coverall inside, used but fairly clean. It doesn't fit her too well, but it's better than the stuff from the hospital. She's still barefoot. The sun, which she hasn't seen in months, hurts her eyes. Jaune and Finch pull up in the pickup.

"We need to get as far from the city as possible." Jaune said.

Winter gets an idea as she get in the car and said, "Just head south."

The car roars through light traffic down a long stretch of highway. Finch sit in the passenger seat while Winter sit in backseat. Winter leans over to get a look at the speedometer.

"Keep it under sixty-five. We can't afford to be pulled over." Winter said.

"Affirmative." Jaune said as he backs off the throttle slightly.

"No, no, no. You gotta listen to the way people talk. See, you don't say like 'Affirmative' or some shit like that. You say... 'no problemo'. If someone comes off to you with an attitude, you say 'eat me'... and if you wanna shine them on, it's 'Hasta la vista, baby'."

"Hasta la vista, baby?" Jaune said in a slow tone, trying them out.

"Yeah, or 'later, dickwad.' Or if someone gets upset you say, 'chill out.' Like that. Or you can do combinations." Finch explains.

"Chill out, dickwad." Jaune said trying them out.

"That's great! See, you're getting it." Finch says excited

"No problemo." Jaune said.

There's a gas pump and a sleazy fast-food stand. Picnic tables are set up at the side of the food stand. A family sits at one, children playing and running about. The pickup truck pulls into the lot. They stop at the gas pump.

Winter turns to Finch. "You got any cash?"

Finch pulls what's left of his Ready-Teller money from his pocket.

"Only a couple hundred bucks. I'll give you half." Finch said.

Winter grabs all of it. Peels off a twenty, hands it to Finch and tells him "Get some food." She opens the truck door and steps out. Finch turns to Jaune. "No sense of humor."

"And that's another thing. You could lighten up a bit, yourself. This severe routine is getting old. Smile once in a while." Finch says as he and Jaune move to the ordering window.

"Smile?" Jaune asks perplexed at what that is.

"Yeah, smile. You know. People smile, right? Watch." Finch says as he goes to the order window.

He demonstrates by smiling broadly, "Hi. Nice place you got here. How's business?" Finch asked.

"Gimme a break." Window Woman said with a stone-face.

To Jaune, "Okay. Bad example." Finch said as he looks around a bit.

"Over there, look." Finch says as he points at a teenage guy standing at a pay phone nearby. He's talking to someone and starts laughing, grinning.

"Like that." Finch said.

Jaune's POV, the real-time image continues while a replay of one of the guys grinning runs in a window. It expands, so that the guy's mouth fills the window. Replays again in slow motion. A vector-graphic of the lips smiling appears, along with an array of symbolic data.

Jaune tries it and the result is dismal. A rictus-like curling of the lip, causing many to cringe.

Finch cringe at the smile gone wrong.

His's next effort is a marginal improvement.

"That's good, maybe you could practice in front of a mirror or something." Finch said.

Winter and Finch are eating cheeseburgers and fries, sitting in the car and on the curb, respectively. They are parked away from the other families, at the end of the gravel parking area. Jaune is pouring coolant into the radiator. Winter is deep in through, turning and turning the whole thing in her brain. Finch, unable to deal with her silence, goes around to where Jaune is working.

"Need any help?" Finch asked.

"No." Jaune said as they heard a noise and turn to sees two kids, a human and a Faunus, playing with machine-gun water pistols nearby, viciously squirting each other.

"You're dead!" First Kid.

"Am not!" Second Kid said.

"Are so!" First Kid said.

Finch and Jaune watch them rolling on the ground in a fight to the death. Winter rounds the front of the truck and sees the kids. Finch sighs, solemn.

"We're not gonna make it, are we?" Finch asked as he turns towards the cyborg. "People, I mean."

"It is in your nature to destroy yourselves." Jaune said.

Finch turns the kids and saw their mother break them up from fighting. "Yeah. Major drag, huh?" Earning a several dejected nods.

"I need to know how Skynet gets built. Who's responsible?" Winter asks Jaune.

"The man most directly responsible is Flynt Coal." Jaune answered as he closes the hood.

"Who is that?" Winter asked as they walked to the car.

"He's the Director of Special Projects at Cyberdyne Systems Corporation." Jaune said as they get into the car.

"Why him?"

"In a few months he creates a revolutionary type of microprocessor."

"Go on. Then what?"

They accelerate back onto the highway as Jaune speaks. "In three years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterward, they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human and Faunus decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."

"And Skynet fights back." Winter said in realization

"Yes. It launches its ICBMs against their targets in Vale." Jaune stated.

"Why attack Vale? Don't they have friends there?" Finch asked.

"Because Skynet knows that the Vale counter-strike will remove its enemies here." Jaune said.

"Monty Oum. How much do you know about Flynt?" Winter asked.

"I have detailed files." Jaune said.

"I want to know everything. What he looks like. Where he lives. Everything." Winter said.

Flynt Coal sits at the huge desk in his study. He is deep in thought, tapping away at the keyboard of his home computer terminal. Next to desk are racks of sophisticated gear. On a Sunday morning, when most men are relaxing, spending time with their families, Flynt is hard at work.

In a profile closeup, it shows him in deep concentration, his mind prowling the labyrinth of his new microprocessor.

A woman's face enters the frame soundlessly behind him. He doesn't hear her. His wife, Neon, extends her tongue and traces it down the back of his neck. He smiles and turns to kiss her good morning. She's still in her bathrobe, holding coffee. He's been up for hours. He turns and goes back to work, forgetting instantly that she is standing there. She watches him work, the arcane symbols moving across the screen. The audience sees her frustration, her inability to truly enter the magic box of his world.

"You going to work all day?" Neon asked.

"I'm sorry, baby. This thing is just kicking my ass. I thought we had it with this one..." Flynt said.

He points to a metal box on his desk, about two feet long. As assembly of small cubes. It looks like a dinosaur version of Jaune's CPU.

"Flynt, it's Sunday. You promised to take the kids to Raging Waters today." Neon said.

"Oh. I can't, honey. I'm on a roll here." Flynt said.

He takes her hands. A childlike excitement in his face. He wants so badly to share the almost orgasmic thrill of discovery, the satisfaction of creation.

"Baby, this thing is going to blow 'em all away. It's a neural-net process-" Flynt said but interrupted by his wife.

"I know. You told me. It's a neural-net processor. It thinks and learns like we do. It's superconducting at room temperature. Other computer are pocket calculators by comparison." Neo said by memory.

"Well that's a good thing, I think. I mean, with the better than computers thing." Flynt said.

"But why is that so goddamn important, Flynt? I really need to know, because I feel like I'm going crazy here, sometimes." Neon said.

"I'm sorry, honey, it's just that I'm this~ close." Flynt said as he holds up his thumb and index finger... a fraction of an inch apart. She picks up the prototype. It doesn't look like much.

"Imagine a jetliner with a pilot that never makes a mistake, never gets tired, never shows up to work with a hangover." He taps the prototype. "Meet the pilot." Flynt said.

"…Why did you marry me, Flynt? Why did we have these two children? You don't need us. Your heart and your mind are in here." She stares at the metal box in her hands. "But it doesn't love you like we do." Neon said.

He takes the anodized box from her hands and sets it down. Then he puts his hands on her shoulders and kisses her gently. She acquiesces to his kiss.

"I'm sorry."

Neon glances over his shoulder. She nods her head toward the doorway to the study. Flynt turns and sees their two kids standing there. Danny and Blythe, 6 and 4 respectively, look rumpled and adorable in their PJs. Flynt wilts at their hopeful expressions.

"How about spending some time with your other babies?" Neon asks with a smile.

Flynt grins. The forces of darkness have lost this round. He holds out his hands and his kids run to him, cheering.

The desert northwest of Atlagerie. Burning under the sun like a hallucination. Heat shimmers the image, mirage-like. Jaune turns the pickup off the paved road and barrels along a roadbed a sand and gravel, trailing a huge plume of dust. A sign at the turnoff says: CHARON MESA=2 MI Atlagerie=15MI. Ahead is a pathetic oasis of humanity in the vast wasteland, a couple of aging house-trailers, surrounded by assorted junk vehicles and desert-style trash. There is a dirt airstrip behind the trailers, and a stripped Huey helicopter sitting on block nearby.

The truck rolls to a stop in a cloud of dust. The place looks deserted. The door to the nearest trailer bangs in the wind.

To Jaune and Finch, Winter said "Stay in the car."

A dark figure in the F.G. has an AK-47 trained on the pickup as Winter gets out. On Winter peering through the backlit dust. The sound of wind. She approaches the trailer.

In Vacuoan, "Taiyang? You here?" Winter asked, causing many to perk up in shock.

She hears KACHANK! behind her and spins, whipping out her .45 in one motion. Taiyang Xiao Long stands behind a rusting jeep, a 12-gauge pump trained on her. He is in his mid-forties, a tough Vacuo Man with a weathered face and heavy mustache. He wears cowboy boots and a flak vest, no shirt.

"You pretty jumpy, Schnee." Tai says, his fierce face breaks into a broad grin. The shotgun drops to his side as he walks toward her. When he reaches her, he hugs her, then steps back.

"Good to see you, Schnee. I knew you'd make it back here sooner or later." Tai said.

He grins at Finch as he steps from the car, and then see's Jaune getting out.

"Oye, Big Finch! Que pasa? Who's your very large friend?" Tai asked

"He's cool, Tai. He's... uh... this is my Uncle Jaune." To Jaune, in English, "Uncle Jaune, this is Taiyang." Finch said.

Jaune smiles, Sort of.

Tai squints at him "Hmmm. Uncle Jaune, huh? Okay." Yelling, "Summer! Get out here, we got company. And bring some damn tequila!"

A thin Guatemalan Hawk Faunus, Franco, eighteen or so, comes out of the trailer with the AK-47, followed by Tai's wife, Summer. She has two young children with her, from a three-year-old Yang, to a year-and-half-old Ruby. She waves at Finch. They exchange some greetings, they seem like nice people.

Jaune looks down at Finch, next to him. He said quietly, "Uncle Jaune?"

Finch shrugged.

"So, Winterlita, you getting famous, you know that? All over the goddamn TV." Taiyang said.

Tai rips the cap off the tequila bottle. The One-and-a-Half-year-old toddler goes to Jaune and grabs his pants, sliming them with drool. Jaune looks down at the tiny kid, fascinated. What is it?

He picks up the child with one huge hand. Looks at it. Turns it different ways. Studying it. Then sets it down. Ruby waddles off, a little dizzy.

"I just came for my stuff. And I need clothes, food, and one of your trucks." Winter said.

Grinning, Tai asked "Hey, how about the fillings out of my fucking teeth while you're at it?"

"Now, Tai." Turns to Jaune and Finch, "You two are on weapons detail." Winter said.

Jaune, who is holding one end of a piece of heavy chain which disappears into the sand, pulls and reveals a six-by-eight-foot sheet of steel plate moves slowly under six inches of sand. Jaune drags it far enough to reveal... a rectangular hole in the ground. Like the mouth of a tomb.

"One thing about my mom... she always plans ahead." Finch said.

From inside the "tomb". Sunlight slashes down into a cinder-block room, less than six feet wide but over twenty longs. Sand spills down the steps. The walls are lined with guns.

Finch precedes Jaune into Winter's weapons cache. Rifles, pistols, rocket launchers, mortars, RPGs, radio gear. At the far end, boxes containing ammo, grenades, etc. are stacked to the ceiling. Jaune gets real alert. Scanning, wondering where to begin. He picks up a MAC-10 machine pistol. Racks the bolt.

"Excellent." Jaune said.

"Yeah, I thought you'd like this place." Finch said with a smirk.

Winter emerges from a trailer. She has changed. Boots, black fatigue pants, T-shirt. Shades. She looks hard. Tai is nearby, packing food and other survival equipment with Yolanda. He looks up as Winter approaches, and slaps the side of a big four-by bronco next to him.

"This is the best truck, but the water pump is blown. You got the time to change it out?" Tai asked.

"Yeah. I'm gonna wait till dark to cross the border." She pulls him away from summer, "Tai, it's dangerous for you here. You get out tonight, too, okay?"

"Yeah, Sure." He grins, "Just drop by any time and totally fuck up my life." Tai said.

She slaps him on the shoulder.

Jaune returns from carrying out several cases of ammo. Finch is selecting rifles from a long rack.

"See, I grew up in places like this, so I just thought it was how people lived... riding around in helicopters. Learning how to blow shit up."Finch grabs an AK-47 and racks the bolt with a practiced action. Inspects the receiver for wear. Doesn't like what he sees, and puts it back. His movement are efficient. Professional. Uninterested.

"Then, when Mom got busted, I got put in a regular school. The other kids were, like, into Nintendo." Finch said in a mocking tone.

Jaune has found a Mistrilian-era "blooper" M-79 grenade launcher. A very crude but effective weapon. He opens the breech and inspects the bore.

"Are you ever afraid?" Finch asked.

Jaune pauses for a second. The thought never occurred to him. He searches in his mind for the answer...

"No."

Jaune slings the M-79 and starts looking for the grenades.

"Not even of dying?" Finch asked.

"No."

"You don't feel any emotion about it one way or the other?" Finch asks with an eyebrow raised

"No. I have to stay functional until my mission is complete. Then it doesn't matter."

Finch is idly spinning a Sig Saur 9mm pistol on his finger... backwards and forwards like Bat Masteron. "Yeah. I have to stay functional too." Then in a sing-song tone, "I'm too important."

Jaune pulls back a canvas tarp, revealing a squat, heavy weapon with six barrels clustered in a blunt cylinder. Chain-ammo is fed from a canister sitting next to it. A G.E. MINI-GUN. The most fearsome anti-personnel weapon of the Vietnam era.

Jaune hefts it. Looks at Finch as if to say "Can I? Please?"

"It's definitely you." Finch said with a smile.

Winter and Finch have their weapons and supply selections laid out on two battered picnic tables for cleaning and packing. Maps, radios, documents, explosives, detonators... just the basics. Winter is field- stripping and cleaning guns, very methodical. There is no wasted motion. Not far away, Finch and Jaune are working on the Bronco. They're greasy up to their elbows, lying on their backs under the engine compartment, ratcheting bolts into places on the new water pump.

"Most of the guys my mom was around were geeks, but there was this one guy that was kinda cool. He taught me engines." Finch tells Jaune as he helps fix the truck.

"Hold this a second." Jaune indicates.

"Mom screwed it up, of course. Sooner or later she'd always tell them about Judgment Day and me being this world leader and that's be all she wrote." Finch said.

Finch thinks he's being causal, but his longing for some kind of parental connection is obvious.

"Torque wrench please." Jaune requested.

"Here. I wish I could have met my real dad." Finch said.

"You will." Jaune said.

"Yeah. I guess so. My mom says when I'm like, 45 I think, I send him back through time to 1984. But right now, he hasn't even been born yet. Man, time is messes with your head." Finch said.

"Where's that other bolt?" Jaune asked.

Finch hands it to him.

"Mom and him were only together for one night, but she still loves him, I guess. I see her crying sometimes. She denies it totally, of course. Like she says she got something in her eye." Finch said.

Jaune turn to Finch.

"Why do you cry?" Jaune asked.

"You mean people?" Finch asked.

"Yes." Jaune replied.

"I don't know. We just cry. You know. When it hurts." Finch said.

Jaune didn't get it as they crawl out from under the truck into the sunlight.

"Pain causes it?" Jaune asked.

"Uhh, no, it's different... It's when there's nothing wrong with you but you hurt anyway. You get it?" Finch asked.

"No."

Jaune stuck his arm into the Bronco driver window and turns the ignition key and the engine catches with a roar.

"Alriight! My man!" Finch said.

"No problemo." Jaune said.

Finch grins and does a victorious thumbs up. Jaune imitates the gesture awkwardly. Finch laughs and begin to try and teach him how to high five.

Winter, across the compound, pauses in her work to watch Finch and Jaune.

Winter's POV, no sound is heard of what Finch and Jaune are saying. It is a soundless pantomime as Finch is trying to show some other, gestures?, to the cyborg. Trying to get him to walk more casually. Finch walks, then Jaune tries it, then Finch gestures wildly, talking very fast... explaining the fundamental principles of cool. They try it again. Continued ad lib as we hear Winter voice.

" _Watching Finch with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The Terminator, Jaune, would never stop, it would never leave him... it would always be there. And it would never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and hit him, or say it couldn't spend time with him because it was too busy. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice._ "

Winter clenches her jaw and goes grimly back to work... a strong woman made hard and cold by years of hard choices. She sits at the picnic table. A few hours have passed, and the weapons are cleaned, her work is done. She hasn't slept in twenty-four hours and she seems to have the weight of the whole world on her shoulder. She draws her knife from its belt sheath. Idly starts to carve something on the table top... the letter "N".

No far away, Finch and Jaune are packing the Bronco for the trip. On Winter, at the table as she looks up from her carving, thinking. She watches Taiyang's kids playing nearby... wrestling with a muddy Corgi dog and loving it. She watches Summer walking her toddler by her hands. Backlit, stylized. She looks over at Finch loading guns and supplies.

Due to fatigue, Winter's head droops, and she closes her eyes.

Small children playing. Different ones. It reveals a playground in a park. Very idyllic. A dream playground, crowded with laughing children playing on swings, slides, and a jungle gym. It could be the playground seen melted and frozen in the post-nuclear desolation of 2029. But here the grass is vibrant green and the sun is shining.

Winter, short-haired, looking drab and paramilitary, stands outside the playground. An outsider. Her fingers are hooked in a chain-link fence and she is staring through the fence at the young mothers playing with their kids. A grim-faced harbinger.

Some girls play skip-rope. Their sing-song weaves through the random burbling laughter of the kids. One of the young mothers walks her two-year-old son by the hands. She is wearing a pink waitress uniform. She turns to the audience, laughing. It is Winter. Beautiful. Radiant. Winter from another life, uncontaminated by the dark future. She glances at the strange woman beyond the fence.

Grim-faced Winter presses against the fence. She starts shouting at them in slow motion. No sound comes from her mouth. She grabs the fence in frustration, shaking it. Screaming soundlessly. Waitress Winter's smile falls. Then returns as her little boy throws some sand at her. She laughs, turns away, as if the woman at the fence was a shadow, a trick of light.

The sky explodes. The children ignite like match heads. Winter is burning, screaming silently, everything silent and overexposed. The blast wave hits... devouring the cowering mothers and children. Winter's scream merges with the howl of the wind as the shockwave rips into her, blasting her apart and leaving her skeleton in her place...

Winter wakes up. All is quiet and normal. The children are still playing nearby. Less than fifteen minutes have gone by. Bathed in sweat, Winter sits hunched over the table. Every muscle is shaking. She is gasping. Winter struggles to breathe, running her hand through her hair which is soaked with sweat, she can escape from the hospital, but she can't escape from the madness which haunts her.

She looks down at the words she has carved on the table, amid the scrawled hearts and bird-droppings. "NO FATE." Something changes in her eyes. She slams her knife down in the table top, embedding it deeply in the words. She gets up suddenly and starts walking toward Jaune and Finch, striding across the compound with grim purpose. She carries a small nylon pack and a CAR-15 assault rifle. Her face is an impassive mask. She has become a Terminator.

Finch looks up from his work in time to see Winter throw the rifle behind the seat of their stolen pickup, jump in and start it. She slams it into gear. Tai walks up to Finch.

"She said you go south with him..." He points at Jaune, "... tonight, like you planned. She will meet you tomorrow in..." Tai says but Finch is moving, running after her.

"Mommm! Wait!" Finch shouted.

Moving with Winter as she leaves the compound. Finch is seen running after her, yelling. She can't hear his words. She looks in the rear- view mirror but doesn't slow down…

Finch and Jaune ponders the message carved into the top of the picnic table. Winter's knife is still embedded there.

"'No fate.' No fate but what we make. My father told her this... I mean I made him memorize it, up in the future, as a message to her -Never mind. Okay, the whole thing goes 'The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.'" Finch said.

"She intends to change the future somehow." Jaune said after a thought.

"I guess, yeah-" He snaps his fingers as it hits him, "Oh shit!" Finch said.

"Flynt." Jaune said.

"Yeah, gotta be! Flynt Coal! She's gonna blow him away!" Finch said.

Finch motions to Jaune and breaks into a run.

"Come on. Let's go. LET'S GO!" Finch shouted.

Winter speeds through the darkening desert. Expressionless. In her dark glasses, she looks as pitiless as an insect. Tracking with the bronco, Jaune and Finch heads toward L.A.

"This is tactically dangerous." Jaune warns Finch.

"Drive faster." Finch said.

"The T-1000 has the same files that I do. It could anticipate this move and reacquire you at Flynt's house." Jaune reminds Finch.

"I don't care. We've gotta stop her." Finch said.

"Killing Flynt might actually prevent the war." Jaune said.

"I don't care! Haven't you learned anything?! Haven't you figured out why you can't kill people?" Finch asked.

Jaune is still stumped and looks questionably at him.

"Look, maybe you don't care if you live or die. But everybody's not like that! Okay?! We have feelings. We hurt. We're afraid. You gotta learn this stuff, man, I'm not kidding. It's important." Finch said.

The house is high-tech and luxurious. Lots of glass. Flynt's study is lit bluish with the glow of his computer monitors. He is at the terminal, working. Where else? We see him clearly in a long shot from an embankment behind the house. A dark figure moves into the foreground. Focusing on the shadow, it reveals Winter as she turns into profile. She raises the CAR-15 rifle and begins screwing the long heavy cylinder of a sound-suppresser onto the end of the barrel.

Inside the house, Flynt's kids, Danny and Blythe, are playing in the halls with a radio- controlled off-road truck. Danny drives and Blythe scampers after it, trying to catch it. They stop in the hall outside Dyson's study and sees him working at his terminal. Danny puts a finger to his lips, shushing Blythe. His expression is mischievous.

With the silencer in place, Winter eases back the bolt and then slips it forward, chambering a .223 round. Then she lies down on the embankment. Her cheek pressed against the cool rifle-stock, she slides one hand slowly forward to brace the weapon, taking the weight on her elbow. Her other hand slips knowingly to the trigger. Her expression is cold, impassive. She looks through the scope at the man in the house. She feels nothing as she raises the rifle.

Flynt, in deep thought. The rhythmic sounds of keys as he works. Symbols on the screen shift. On his back we see the glowing red dot appear. It is the target dot of Flynt's laser designator. It moves silently up his back toward his head.


	5. 5

In extreme closeup, we see Winter's eye at the night-scope. Tight insert on her finger as it tightens on the trigger, taking out the slack. She takes a deep breath and holds it. Adjusts her position minutely. The laser dot jiggles on the back of Dyson's neck and then rises, centering on the back of his skull.

Danny's Bigfoot truck roars toward us and… Thump. It hits Flynt's foot. He jerks, startled, and looks down as - POP! His monitor screen is blown out, spraying his with glass.

He jerks back, utterly shocked... and spins to see the huge hole blown through the window behind him. This saves him as K-THUMP! - the second shot blows the top of his high-backed chair into an explosion of stuffing an inch from his head. Instinctively he dives to the carpet as -BLAM BLAM BLAM - rounds blast through the window, tearing into his desk and computer, blowing his keyboard into shrapnel. With the monitor screen blown out, the room is in darkness. Winter can't see Flynt now, down behind his desk. She puts round after round into the heavy desk, blasting one side of it into kindling. Flynt, scared out of his mind, has his face jammed against the carpet, terrified to move. He sees his kids in the hall.

"Run, kids! Go! Run!" Flynt yelled.

In the hall, Neon rounds the corner at a dead run. She sees the kids running toward her and grabs them in her arms. Down the hall, in the dark study, she sees Flynt on the floor amid the splinters and shrapnel of the continuing fusillade.

"Flynt! Oh my God!" Neon yelled.

"Stay back!" Flynt shouted.

On the floor, Flynt flinches as chucks of wood and shattered computer components shower down on him. He looks desperately toward the door, but knows he'd be totally exposed. He'd never make it.

Winter's rifle empties with a final CLACK! She throws it down and draws her .45 smoothly from a shoulder base. She starts toward the house, snapping back the slide on the pistol, chambering a round. She is in a fast, purposeful walk, keeping her eyes fixed on the target. She is utterly determined to kill this man.

From under the desk Flynt can see a sliver in the backyard. He sees Winter's feet as she strides toward him. He tenses to make a break for the door.

Winter raises the pistol, eyes riveted ahead, controlling her breathing. Flynt springs up in a full-tilt sprint. She tracks him. He hooks a foot on the cord of a toppled disk drive. BOOM! Her shot blows apart a lamp where his head was. He hits the floor hard, but keeps moving, scrambling forward. Crunch of glass behind his as Winter's dark form is framed in the blown-out floor-to-ceiling window. Flynt leaps toward the hall. BOOM! Her second shot spins him. He hits the floor in the hallway. Neon is screaming. Flynt struggles forward, stunned. There is a .45-caliber hole clean through his left shoulder. He smears the wall with blood as he staggers up. Looking back, he sees the implacable figure behind him, coming on. He topples through a doorway as - BOOM! BOOM! Shots blowing away the molding where he just was.

Advancing with Winter we enter the living area. Neon has Blythe and she's screaming at Danny, who has run back to his collapsed father.

"Danny! DANNY!" Neon yelled to her son.

"Daaaaddddyyyy!" Danny cry out.

Danny is pulling at Flynt, crying and screaming, as his father tries to stagger forward. Neon drops Blythe and runs back for Flynt, grabbing him. Winter looms behind them with the pistol aimed.

"Don't fucking move! Don't FUCKING MOVE!" She swings the gun on Neon, "Get on the floor, bitch! Now! Fucking down! NOW!" Winter ordered.

Winter is crazy eyed now, shaking with the intensity of the moment. The kill has gone bad, with screaming kids and the wife involved... things she never figured on. Neon drops to the knees, terrified as she looks into the muzzle of the gun. Blythe runs to Flynt and hugs him, wailing.

"Don't hurt my father!" Blythe begged.

"Shut up, kid! Get out of the way!" Winter shouted.

Flynt looks up, through his pain and incomprehension. Why is this nightmare happening? The black gun muzzle is a foot from his face.

"Please... let... the kids... go..." Flynt said while gasping.

"Shut up! SHUT UP! Motherfucker! It's all your fault! IT'S YOUR FAULT!" Winter yelled in anger.

Flynt, confused to what she's talking about, says "What?"

She's psyching herself up to pull the trigger... needing now to hate this man she doesn't know. It's a lot harder face-to-face. She is bathed in sweat, and it runs into her eyes. Blinking, she wipes it fast with one hand, then gets it back on the gun. The .45 is trembling.

Tight on Winter as the forces at war behind her eyes. She looks into the faces of Flynt, Neon, Blythe, and Danny. Winter takes a sharp breath and all the muscles in her arms contract as she tenses to fire. But her finger won't do it. She lowers the gun very slowly. It drops to her side in one hand. All the breath and her energy seem to leave her. She weakly raises her other hand in a strange gesture, like "Stay where you are, don't move". As if, should they move, the fragile balance might tip back the other way. She backs away from them slowly, panting. It's as if she's backing away in terror from what she almost did. She reaches a wall and slumps against it. Slides down to her knees. The gun falls limply from her fingers. She rests her cheek against the wall.

Jaune and Finch leap from the jeep, sprinting toward the house. Finch, seeing the destruction, simply said "Shit, we're too late!"

The front door is kicked in. Jaune steps inside. Finch grabs his sleeve and pushes past him. He scopes out the situation in two seconds... Winter, the gun, the sobbing family. Finch moves to Winter while Jaune checks Flynt. Finch kneels in front of his mother. She raises her head to look at him. He sees the tears spilling down her cheeks.

"Mom? You okay?" Finch asked.

"I couldn't... oh, Oum." Winter said.

"Uh huh." Finch agreed.

She reaches out and takes his shoulder suddenly, surprising him... drawing him to her. She hugs him and a great sob wells up deep inside her, from a spring she had thought long dry. She hugs him fiercely as the sobs wrack her. Finch clutches her shoulders. It is all he ever wanted.

"It's okay. It'll by okay. We'll figure it out." Finch said.

"You... came here... to stop me?" Winter asked.

"Yeah." Finch replied.

Winter, with tears in her eyes, said to him "I love you, Finch. I always have."

"I know, Mom. Me too." Finch said.

Neon looks around at the bizarre tableau. Jaune has wordlessly ripped open Flynt's shirt and examined the wound.

"Clean penetration. No shattered bone. Compression should control the loss of blood." Jaune says as he takes Neon's hands and presses them firmly over the entrance and exit wounds.

Finch disengages from Winter. She wipes her tears, the instinct to toughen up taking over again. But the healing moment has had its effect, nevertheless.

Finch walks toward Flynt and Jaune.

"Who are you people?" Flynt asked in pain.

Finch draws the Biker's knife from Jaune's boot and hands it to him.

"Show him." Finch said.

Jaune grab the knife and takes off his jacket to reveal bare arms, causing a few to drool. Finch takes Blythe by the hands and leads her down the hall, away from what is about to happen.

Tight on Jaune's left forearm as the knife makes a deep cut just below the elbow as Neon whimpers at the clearly crazy man cutting himself. In one smooth motion, Jaune cuts all the way around his arm. With a second cut, he splits the skin of the forearm from elbow to wrist.

Jaune grasps the skin and strips is off his forearm like a surgeon rips off a rubber glove. It comes off with a sucking rip, leaving a bloody skeleton. But the skeleton is made of bright metal, and is laced with hydraulic actuators. The fingers are as finely crafted as watch parts... they flex into a fist and extend.

Jaune holds it up, palm out, in almost the exact position of the one in the vault at Cyberdyne. Flynt begins reacting to the servo-hand in front of him. He's seen one of these before. Neon is screaming now, but he doesn't hear her.

"My God." Flynt said.

"Listen to me very carefully." Jaune said.

Winter puts out her fifth cigarette. She's sitting on the counter. Finch, Jaune, Flynt, and Neon are at the kitchen table, under a single overhead light. Flynt looks like that guy on the Sistine Chapel wall, the damned soul... eyes fixed and staring with terrifying knowledge. His shoulder is bandaged. Jaune's arm is wrapped with a blood-soaked bandage below the elbow. The steel forearm and hand gleam in the harsh kitchen light. The screen tracks around the table as Jaune speaks... no words are heard. Instead, Winter's voice could be heard over the conversation.

" _Flynt listened while the Terminator laid it all down. Skynet. Judgment Day... the history of things to come. It's not every day you find out you're responsible for 3 billion deaths. He took it pretty well."_

Jaune finishes speaking.

"I feel like I'm gonna throw up." Flynt said.

He looks around at them, clutching the table like he's about to blow away. His face, his posture, his ragged voice express soul-wrenching terror. This is a man ripped out of normal life into their grim world. His voice is pleading.

"You're judging me on things I haven't even done yet. Monty Oum. How were we supposed to know?" Flynt asked.

Winter speaks from the shadows behind them. Flynt turns to find her looking right at him.

"Yeah. Right. How were you supposed to know? Fucking men like you built the Hydrogen Bomb. You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something... to create a life. To feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death and destruction." Winter says in a haunting voice.

"Mom… we need to be more constructive here. We still have to stop this from happening, don't we?" Finch asked.

"But I thought... aren't we changing things? I mean... right now? Changing the way, it goes?" Neon asked, confused.

Flynt, seizing on that, said "That's right! There's no way I'm going to finish the new processor now. Forget it. I'm out of it. I'm quitting Cyberdyne tomorrow."

"That's not good enough." Winter said coldly.

"No one must follow your work." Jaune explained.

Flynt, thoughts racing, nods. "Alright, yeah. You're right. We have to destroy the stuff at the lab, the files, disk drive... and everything I have here. Everything. I don't care." He has a sudden thought. "The chip. Do you know about the chip?"

"What chip?" Winter asks somewhat worried.

"They have it in a vault at Cyberdyne." He turns to Jaune. "It's gotta be from the other one like you." Flynt said.

"The CPU from the first Terminator." Jaune said to Winter.

"Son of a bitch, I knew it!" Winter said as she get off the counter.

"They told us not to ask where they got it." Flynt said.

"Those lying motherfuckers!" Winter cursed.

"It was scary stuff, radically advanced. It was shattered... didn't work. But it gave us ideas, It took us in new directions... things we would never have thought of. All this work is based on it." Flynt said.

"It must be destroyed." Jaune said.

"Can you get us in there, past security?" Winter asked Flynt.

"I think so, yeah. When?" Flynt asked as Jaune stand up.

Flynt looks at him, then at Winter, then Finch. He sees his answer.

"Now?" Flynt asked.

Pavement rushing at the screen, lit by headlights. Beyond, darkness. Winter's voice is heard once more.

" _The future, always so clear to me, has become like a black highway at night. We were in uncharted territory now... making up history as we went along."_

It changes to a door in front of Cyberdyne, as Flynt's hand zips his security card through a slot in one motion. There is the sound of a servo-lock, and Flynt enters into a spacious lobby, followed by Winter, Finch, and Jaune last of all. In a frontal angle, the others block Jaune from view. The guard at the front desk, Gibbons, looks up as Flynt moves toward him. Flynt is pale and sweaty, but smiles warmly at the guard, speaking well before he reaches the desk.

"Evening uhm Carl, right? These are friends of mine from out of town, I just thought I'd take them up and show them around." Flynt said.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Coal. You know the rules about visitors in the lab. I need written authoriz-" Gibbons said but the interrupted.

K-CHAK! Gibbons is staring down the barrels of Winter's .45 and Jaune's MAC-10.

"I insist." Jaune said.

The guard is too stunned to move. We see that Jaune is wearing his jacket and black gloves. Gibbon's eyes go to the silent alarm button on the console.

"Don't even think about it." Winter said.

Gibbons nods. He stays frozen. Jaune circles quickly and gets the guard out of the chair. Finch pulls a roll of duct-tape from his knapsack and tears off a piece.

Elevator doors open, and Jaune leads the group warily into the corridor. They have a cart piled high with gear in nylon bags. Flynt motions down the corridor to the right. As they walk, he continues to fill them in…

"The vault needs two keys to open. Mine," holds up a key, "and one from the security station. It's in a locker but my card should access it. Here we go." Flynt said.

A roving guard, Moshier, strolls down the long corridor from the first-floor office block. A punch clock swings at his hip, and he's just completed his circuit of the building. He passes the back of elevators and rounds the corner to the front desk, calling out…

"Honey, I'm home." Moshier said.

He sees the desk is deserted and frowns. 'Figures Gibbon's must be in the can.' So he checks that first before getting alarmed.

He goes to the restroom around the corner. "Gibbons, come on man, you can't leave the desk like that."

Over his shoulder, past the door as he pushes it open, reveals Gibbons handcuffed to the urinal.

Moshier spins on a dime and sprints to the desk where he slams down on the silent alarm button.

The security station is a pass-through area with a counter, behind which are desks and a bank of monitors, showing boring movies about empty corridors. Flynt crosses quickly to a locker behind the monitor area. He swished his card repeatedly through the scanner on the locker. Nothing happens. The light on the locker is blinking red. Winter notices Flynt's alarmed expression.

"What? WHAT IS IT?" Winter asked worried.

Flynt whips around, staring at a light flashing on the console behind him.

"Damn it, silent alarm's been tripped. It neutralizes the codes throughout the building. Nothing'll open now." Flynt said, much to the horror of many. The audience can see his nerve snapping "We should abort."

"NO! We're going all the way! You got that, Flynt?" Winter shouts right in his face. Somehow, it works for him. He nods, getting some resolve from somewhere.

Moshier's gotten Gibbons loose. He's on the phone to the cops.

"... multiple armed subjects. Look, I think it's the guy from that mall shootout, and the woman... yeah, her. Pretty sure. Just send everything you've got in the area –" Gibbon's said.

Flynt leads Jaune and Winter to the main lab doors. Another servo-lock. He tries his card. Nothing.

"No good." Flynt said.

"Let me try mine." Jaune said.

He unslings the M-79, pulling it over his shoulder in one motion. Winter grabs Flynt and drags him back down the hall. Jaune opens the breach and slide in one of the fat 40mm H.E. grenades. He flips the thing closed with a snap of the wrist.

Winter, as she's running, yells "Finch! Fire-in-the-hole!"

Finch drops what he is doing, and covers his ears. Jaune fires at inhumanely close range. The door explodes into kindling. The concussion blows his jacket open, and flying shrapnel whizzes all around him. Before the thunderclap has faded, Jaune walks into the fire and smoke. Finch goes back to work without missing a beat. Winter and a stunned Flynt walk through the burning doorframe into the Artificial Intelligence Lab.

A siren is sounding. The halon fire-control system has been triggered. The invisible gas roars in, putting out the flames.

Winter is about to continue forward but Flynt stops her. "Wait, Fire's set off the halo system! We have to wait a minute for the gas to clear."

Jaune comes back and has two gas masks for them to use.

"Put these on." Jaune said.

Jaune pulls two five-gallon jerry-cans of gasoline from his pack. Winter starts pulling out book-sized, olive-grab claymore mines, stacking them next to the gasoline. Flynt stares. Part of him can't believe they're really doing this.

Cardin moves slowly though the ravaged office, analyzing what has happened here.

It walks down the dark hallway. The place is deserted. The police-walkie clipped on its belt, real, not simulated, blares to life.

_"All units, all units. 211 in progress at 2144 Kramer Street, the Cyberdyne building. Multiple suspects armed with automatic weapons and explosives. First suspect: named Conner, nee Schnee, first name Winter, escaped yesterday."_

Cardin sprints up and throws its leg over the big C.H.P. Kawasaki. Fires it up. It smokes an arcing scorch-mark on the pavement as it spins around and roars away.

Tight on a large disk drive. State-of-the-art. Very expensive. A fire axe smashes down through the housing, shattering the disk. The screen widens, revealing a scene of high-tech pillage. Jaune beats the disk drive into junk and steps to another. WHAM. Same routine. He's already demolished half a dozen. Winter topples a file cabinet, scattering files. Flynt staggers up with an armload of heavy M-O (magnetic-optical) disks and drops them on a growing stack in the middle of the floor. He and Winter have their breathing masks hanging down around their necks, since the halon gas has dissipated.

To Winter, Flynt pants out "Yeah, all that stuff! And all the disks in those offices. Especially my office, everything in my office!" To Jaune, "These, too! This is important. (SMASH!) And all this here... that's it." Flynt looks around, directing them to which was the most important, and thus the first to go.

Jaune cuts a swath, under Flynt's direction, exploding equipment into fragments with his inhuman swings. SMASH! It's carnage. Millions in hardware, and all irreplaceable fruits of their years of research... shattered, broken, dumped in a heap for the big bonfire of destiny.

Flynt stops a second, panting. He looks at a machine and turns to Jaune who is still cutting away.

"Uhhh excuse me?" Flynt asked.

Jaune, not hearing him, swings downward again destroying the still attached machine he's currently destroying.

"Excuse Me!?" Flynt asked again.

Jaune turns to Flynt and waits for him to continue.

"Can I borrow that thing for a second?" Flynt asked.

Jaune hands him the axe. Flynt hefts it one-handed. He turns to a lab table... on it is another prototype processor.

"I've worked for years on this thing." Flynt said.

Swinging awkwardly but with great force he smashes the axe down onto the processor prototype, exploding it into fragments. His shoulder is agony, but he looks satisfied.

Dozens of police cars come on to the parking lot and surround the building. SWAT as well as a helicopter join them as well.

Finch taps away at his little lap-top, which is running code combinations into the card-key lock. Suddenly, the green light on the lock goes on and it unlocks with a clunk.

"Easy money." Finch said.

He whips it open, revealing a rack of keys. But the vault-key is distinctive, a long steel rectangle on a neck-chain. Finch grabs it and runs toward the lab.

Winter and Jaune are working like a team, rigging the explosives. She is taping the claymores to the gas cans with duct tape to create powerful incendiary bombs. Jaune is attaching claymores and blocks of C-4 plastic explosive to the large mainframe computer cabinets nearby. All the claymores are wired back to one detonator which has a radio-control relay switch.

"How do you set them off?" Flynt asked.

Jaune shows him a remote detonator, a small transmitter with a red plunger.

"Radio remote." Jaune said.

He makes a plunger-pushing motion with his thumb and an accompanying "click" sound. Flynt nods. Just then Finch comes running in, holding up the key.

"I got it. Piece of cake." Finch said.

Winter looks to Flynt and Jaune. "Go! I'll finish here." She said.

They run out as the sound of sirens grow louder outside.

"I'll deal with the police." Jaune said.

"Remember what I said, you can't..." Finch starts but pauses at what he sees.

Jaune turns around and shows his improved smile. "Trust me."

The security duo of Moshier and Gibbons are cowering behind cars in the parking lot in front of the building. They turn as L.A.P.D. black-and-whites pour into the lot, turning the area into a disco of whirling blue and red lights. The cops are jumping from their cars and ducking behind them. Emphasis on small arms here. Behind them an ugly black SWAT van screeches into the lot.

The thump of rotors is heard as a police chopper arrives and swings in close to the building. It rakes its xenon spotlight through the second-floor offices.

Jaune crosses the office toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, gatling gun in hand. He is outlined starkly by the spotlight as it rakes through the dark offices. Without breaking stride, he kicks an executive desk toward the window. Glass explodes outward and the desk topples, falling to the sidewalk below.

Jaune, standing at the edge, begins to fire multiple long bursts amongst the police cars lines up below. The cops duck as glass flies. After the minigun runs out, he drops it in exchange for his grenade launcher. Taking aim, he immediately fires it at another police car, and watches as it goes up in flames.

Jaune, with his superb aim, manages to hit no one. But noticed that the damage to the vehicles are severe.

The cops immediately fire back once the barrage ended. Jaune turns and walks calmly from the window as glass, office furniture, drapes, etc., are riddled by returning fire. A few rounds hit his back, but he doesn't notice. He reloads as he walks.

Tight on a key inserted into one of the vault locks. The view widens as Finch and Flynt stand poised, hands on keys.

"And let's see what's behind door number one." Finch jokes.

Flynt nods and they turns the keys together. The vault grumbles to itself, withdrawing it locking bolts with a final KLONK! Together Flynt and Finch swing the door open.

Finch and Flynt are isolated from the world in this silent steel womb. Flynt opens the cabinet containing the Terminator relics. It's Finch's turn to stare with uneasy déjà vu as he sees the Terminator hand and CPU. Then in one vicious move he sweeps his arm behind the inert-gas flasks and hurls them to the floor. The glass containers shatter. Finch snatches the CPU and the metal hand out of the broken glass.

"Got ol' Skynet by the balls now, Coal. Come on, let's book!" Finch said.

Clutching the steel hand and pocketing the chip like it's a Mars bar he just bought, Finch runs out. Flynt follows.

The varsity takes the field as the SWAT troopers sprint forward by squads. They flank the lobby and work their way inside, deploying rapidly. They move and freeze, behind cover, quivering with adrenaline. They have all that great SWAT equipment: body armor, gasmasks, M-16s, tear-gas launchers, ropes. The works. They make a lot of hand signals and keep their mouths shut. They're well- trained and deadly. We see the advance squad of SWATs make it to one of the stairwells. They start up, two at a time, covering each other ritualistically by the numbers.

Finch pelts into the lab with Flynt stumbling along behind him. Winter is just about finished wiring all the charges to the central detonator.

"Ready to rock?" Finch said.

"Ready." Winter answered.

Finch tosses her the metal hand. She catches it and bends to put the hand in her empty backpack. Winter zips the pack and starts to shuck into it. Flynt begins running out of steam. The bandages at his shoulder are soaked with seeping blood. He stands in the middle of the lab, saying goodbye in his mind, looking weak and empty. Jaune strides into the lab.

"Time to go. Now." Jaune said.

He and Finch head back the way they came, through security. Winter sees that in her work, she has set the detonator down twenty feet away, near where Flynt is standing.

"Flynt, hand me the detonator. Let's go." Winter said.

He gingerly picks up the detonator, then starts toward her. CRASH! The doors at the back end of the lab are kicked open! The SWAT leader and two others open fire immediately, their M-16s raking the room. Winter dives behind a computer cabinet. Flynt however, from being injured and exhausted, is hit. He is slammed to the floor by the impacts.

In the hall, Finch hears the firing and spins to run back.

"Mommm!" Finch yelled.

Jaune grabs him and turns around as bullets slam into his broad back. He makes it around the corner with Finch, out of the line of fire.

In the lab, bullets fly over Winter's head, smacking all around her, clanging into the machine protecting her. She can see Flynt, slumped on the floor. Debris and flying glass rain on her as the SWATs pour on the fire. The detonator is clutched in his hand. He rolls to face her, his eyes bulging from the pain of his torn-up guts.

"Go." Flynt said.

Winter hesitates a split second. Then she nods and snap-rolls and fast-crawls through broken glass and debris into the hall.

Finch see's all of this and notices she's trapped.

"Shit, there's no way out of there." He said as he watches from the monitor.

Jaune hearing that knows just what to do.

We see Winter by a wall when all of a sudden it burst open and shows Jaune and how he broke it down to grab her. Jaune grabs her by the jacket and hauls her roughly to her feet. Bullets strike the walls behind them as they sprint forward.

They around the corner. Finch does a fast take noticing that she's not hit, and they run together through the security checkpoint. Finch reaches the first door, and tries it. Locked. Jaune unslings the M-79 blooper smoothly, opening the breach.

"Get back." Jaune says. He pulls a grenade from the bandolier over his shoulder, and slides it into the bore. Flick his wrist. The breech snaps shut. Winter and Finch have a split second to duck and cover.

"Cover your ears." Jaune warns them.

They do. KABOOM! Twenty feet away the door, and half the wall around it, explodes outward. The back-blast hits Jaune full force, but he strides through the smoking hole before the debris has even hit the floor.

The SWAT leader moves cautiously through the lab. Cat-stepping, he circles around a desk which block Coal's body from his view. His M-16 is leveled crisply. We look over his shoulder as he rounds the desk, revealing Flynt Coal's not dead. He will be very soon, but at this moment he is conscious. He has propped himself up against the desk, and holds a book in one hand. A heavy technical manual. Below the book is the detonator, upright on the tile floor. The message is clear: Shoot me, the book drops on the plunger. Adios.

Flynt wheezes, trying to draw enough breath to talk.

"I don't know... how much longer... I can... hold this thing..." Flynt said.

The SWAT leader seems to see the wires, the claymores, the gas cans all around him for the first time. His eyes, visible through his gasmask, go very wide. He spins and motions his squad back.

"Fall back! Everybody out! Move it! OUT NOW!" the leader ordered.

They retreat so fast they crash into the next group coming up the stairs.

Jaune reaches the main elevators and hits the button. Winter and Finch are coughing and stumbling in the choking darkness, buddy-breathing with the single mask. The doors open and they get in the elevator heading down.

Flynt is lying amid the ruins of his dreams. Sprawled on the floor, he has his back propped up against the desk. He is bathed in his own blood, which runs out in long fingers across the tiles. His breathing is shallow and raspy. He still holds the book, trembling, above the switch. In his lap is the picture from his desk. He has pulled it from the debris next to him. A tear trickles from his eye. His wife and children smile up at him through broken glass. Cut to the pupil of his eye, at the moment of death, the light fade from his eyes. He's gone. His arm drops, and the book hits the switch.

At the face of the building, an explosion erupts with glass and fire flying out in rapid speed. The remains of the second-floor windows shower the parking lot and a huge fireball rolls out, leaping into the sky. The cops look up, stunned. The helicopter banks away from the heat. Burning debris falls among the cop cars and a number of officer's break ranks, pulling back.

Only one of them seems to be moving with purpose. A bike cop who has just arrived drives through the disorganized crowd, directly toward the building.

The elevator doors part and Jaune eases a look out into the corridor. The walls on either side of him erupt with bullet holes. The SWATs had the lobby end of the corridor blocked off. They're totally trapped, cut off, screwed. The SWATs fire a tear gas grenade toward the elevators. It spews the vicious CS gas out in a swirling cloud which envelops Winter and Finch, who are pressed against the back wall of the elevator.

"Keep your eyes closed and don't move. I'll be back." Jaune said. They nodded and squeezed their eyes shut.

He slings the grenade launcher over his shoulder and walks out into the corridor. With the SWAT team, they're gripping their weapons at the mouth of the corridor. They watch the boiling cloud, waiting.

From their POV, on the wall of boiling smoke, a figure appears. Walking as if unaffected by the gas around him. Jaune emerges from the smoke. Not even misty-eyed. Not what they expected.

Through a megaphone, the leader of this group says "Stop where you are. Lie down on the floor, face down. Down on floor, now!"

Jaune continues to stride toward them.

The SWATs tense up. They've never seen anything like this. They're not sure what to do. Closer and closer, he approaches.

"Drop him." Leader ordered.

They open fire. The corridor is filled with cracking thunder as the rounds tear into Jaune's chest. Stomach. Face. Thighs. His leather jacket leaps and jerks as the rounds hit him. The SWATs think the guy's wearing body armor or something. They keep firing. The rounds tear into him, staggering him slightly, but he keeps moving.

"You're not hitting him!" The leader said.

"Yes I am!" One of his subordinates shouted, getting scared of the man who seems to just _eat_ their bullets.

Jaune draws his .45 smoothly. Unhurried. He shoots the nearest man in the left thigh. As he screams and drops, Jaune shoots him in the right thigh. He does this with nearly everyone. Jaune then bends down and picks up the shrieking man's weapon... the tear gas launcher.

It is one of those new rotary jobs that hold 12 rounds in a big drum. Jaune shoots the next SWAT in the chest with the tear-gas launcher. The gas canister hits the guy's body armor but doesn't penetrate. However, it's like getting slugged in the stomach with a full swing from a baseball bat. The SWAT fold double and hits the tiles, gasping.

Jaune is like an image from Hell, a tall figure in shredded black leather, streaked with blood. One eye is a bloody socket, the metal eye-servo glistening. The flesh of one cheek hangs down in tatters, revealing the chrome cheekbone beneath. The whole front of his jacket is blown open, revealing his metal armor chest.

The remaining SWAT starts to fall back. He turns to run and - KPOW! A gas canister nails him in the back, sending him sprawling.

Meanwhile, outside, Cardin guns a bike up a ramp to a pedestrian bridge which crosses from the nearby parking structure to the Cyberdyne building. It enters on the second floor, which is now a burning maze. He drives into the smoky wreckage. It draws a Hoechler, a Koch MPK machine pistol and cruises slowly into the firelit offices, scanning.

Back to the action, smoke boils out of the front door as a figure emerges. Firing the tear-gas launcher with one hand, Jaune launches all remaining rounds among the cop vehicles. Unprotected officers run, choking and half-blind, slamming into cars and tripping over each other. It is a total rout.

At the SWAT van, one of the SWATs is rapidly handing out the remaining masks to unprotected cops. A figure appears out of the smoke beside him. He looks up. His mask is ripped off and he is handed the empty launcher. Instinctively he catches it. Jaune grabs his flak vest with one hand and sails him out into the mist.

Jaune strides the length of the van and climbs into the driver's seat. No keys in the ignition.

He flips down the sun visor. The keys fall into his hand. He starts the van and slams it into gear.

The tear gas has cleared to a thin haze. The uninjured SWATs are tending their wounded. They look up at the sound of shouts and a roaring engine. The SWAT van crashes into the lobby in an explosion of glass and debris. Cops scatter as the van screeches across the lobby in a smoking one-eighty, sliding to a stop across the corridor which leads to the bank of elevators. Jaune backs up until - crunch – he seals the corridor with the back of the van.

Winter and Finch stumble along the corridor, coughing. They leap into the back of the van and Jaune hits the throttle. The van roars across the lobby and exits through blown-out windows.

Cardin, astride the Kawasaki, looks down from a second-floor office and sees the van tearing across the parking lot with the remaining cops firing at it. It knows. It looks around, analyzing its options. It sees the helicopter hovering outside the building at the end of this corner office block. It twists full throttle on the powerful bike, roaring through the office, accelerating fast, straight at the windows.

Cardin blasts out through the glass, airborne on the motorcycle. It rockets across the gap to the hovering chopper and slams into the canopy. The impact of bike and rider pitches the chopper radically. The startled pilot curses a he fights to regain control as the bike tumbles to the pavement below, barely missing a few police below. Cardin doesn't. It clings to the shattered canopy. Nightmarishly, the pilot watches as Cardin smashes its head through the plexiglass and rapidly pours itself through the jagged hole. It reforms instantly into its previous self on the passenger seat.

"Get out." Cardin hurls the pilot out of the chopper and slides into the driver's seat. The chopper is auto-rotating, spinning out of control. It drops toward the parking lot. Cardin recovers control ten feet above the ground.

Cops hits the deck as the tail-boom swings around, going over them by inches. The chopper lifts out in a power climb, roaring away across the parking lot toward the fleeing SWAT van.

Jaune looks back at his two passengers as he turns the boxy van onto a divided highway. Winter and Finch are catching their breath, still coughing from the CS gas. Jaune looks to the rear-view mirror. He sees the xenon searchlight of the chopper behind them, gaining. Winter looks around the inside of the SWAT van. It is a rolling armory. There are rifles, ballistic vests, all manner of equipment.

"Finch, get under these. Hurry! And no matter what, you stay under there." Winter said.

He sits against the front bulkhead of the van and she pile bullet-proof vests on top of him, completely covering him. Looking back, she sees the helicopter chasing them

"Chopper, coming in." Winter said.

Jaune sensing futuristic robotics in the helicopter stated, "It's him."

Winter grabs two M-16s from the wall-rack and loads them. She starts on a shotgun as the SWAT van weaves through sparse traffic at high speed. Jaune slews the unstable van around cars and trucks which seem to be crawling. The van hits its top speed of eighty.

The chopper swings in behind them, closing fast. Cardin reaches through the shattered canopy with the MPK machine pistol and fires. The back of the van clangs with hits. The door windows are blown in.

Jaune weaves the van, trying to throw off Cardin's aim. The unstable vehicle screeches and wobbles on the edge of control. One of the doors is kicked open. Winter, wearing a ballistic vest, crouches in the doorway, whipping up the M-16. She opens fire. Bullets riddle what's left of the chopper's canopy as Cardin returns fire. The van is stitched with hits.

Inside the van, holes are punched through the thin sheet-metal walls, ripping up the interior. The vests covering Finch are hit repeatedly. We see that Winter has hung two Kevlar vests on the inside of the back door and she ducks behind these as bullets hit around her. She pops back out and fires in controlled bursts. The M-16 empties, and she grabs another.

Jaune swerves around a car which is changing lanes, hitting it and causing it to skid off to the side. They swerve to miss the back end of a white 18-wheel tanker. Winter reloads and keeps firing. The van swerves around a Toyota. A moment later the helicopter passes it, the rotor just clearing the top of the car.

Cardin fires the machine pistol just as Winter popped out to fire. She takes a hit in the thigh, and several rounds hammer into her Kevlar vest. She is thrown back onto the floor of the van. She lies there, an exposed target...

Jaune sees Cardin preparing to fire again. He locks up the van's brakes. Tires screech as the vehicle shimmies. Winter is thrown forward, sliding up to the bulkhead next to Finch, and the helicopter slams right into the back of the van. The rotor disintegrates, the back doors of the van are crushed in as the canopy, the whole front of the fuselage is hammered into junk, trapping Cardin inside the twisted metal. The chopper hits the pavement, flips, sideways, and cartwheels... smashing itself into a shapeless mass of twisted metal. It falls away behind the van, tumbling end over end.

Jaune fights to control the van, which is fishtailing violently from the impact. It smashes up against the center divider, screeching along the concrete, and then pulls away. Jaune puts the hammer down and the van accelerates. He swerves to avoid an ugly pickup crawling like a snail ahead. The right front fender of the van crumpled by slamming the wall, sawing into the tire. The tire blows and peels off the clean rim. The steel wheel grinds across the pavement, striking trails of sparks, and the van slides sideways and topples. Steel screams on pavement as the van grinds to a stop on its side.

Inside the van, Finch crawls to Winter, who is groaning and holding her bleeding leg. She is pale and is in shock. Jaune starts to extricate himself from the crumpled driver's seat.

Back down the road, the helicopter wreckage is a crumpled ball of junk metal, unrecognizable. Behind it, the tanker truck brakes hard, shuddering and groaning, trying to stop. The big tires lock up in clouds of tire-smoke. The rig comes to a shuddering stop just short of the wrecked chopper. The shaken driver jumps down. Behind the wreckage a cop emerges, walking toward him.

"Goddamn, are you alri-" The driver started but paused.

SSSHHCK! Cardin drives a blade through the man's abdomen and walks on past without slowing, or even looking at him.

It climbs into the open cab of the tanker. Releases the brake. As the truck bellows are rolls forward, we see the large blue letters on the side which say "CRYOCO INC. LIQUID NITROGEN SUPPLY'.


	6. 6

At the van, Finch and Jaune are seen carrying Winter out of the wreck. Jaune has the M-79 slung over his shoulder, a bandolier of grenades, and his .45 stuck in his waistband. Finch 'borrowed' a 12-gauge riot gun from the van.

The pickup they pass seconds earlier pulls up to them. The driver, a Hispanic guy in his 50's, is getting out to help them. Jaune and Finch hear a crash and look back as the helicopter wreckage is knocked aside by the accelerating tanker truck.

"Holy shit. Come on, Mom... we gotta keep moving... come on." Finch said.

Jaune looks to the pickup owner and says, "We need your truck."

The guy seems to know better than to try and stop him as Jaune slides Winter into the front seat and climbs in behind the wheel. Finch runs to the passenger side.

The tanker roars, spewing smoke from its chrome stacks as it shifts up through the gears.

Jaune slams the pickup in gear, checking the rear-view. The tanker is a hundred feet behind them now, and really moving. Jaune puts the throttle down, but the pickup is an old slug loaded down by a heavy home-made wooden camper-shell. It accelerates slowly.

The tanker slams into one end of the wrecked SWAT van, spinning it out of the way with a roar and screech of twisting metal. The 18-wheeler shifts to a higher gear, still accelerating.

With the tanker right behind them, Jaune cuts the wheel, swerving the pickup back and forth across the lanes. The big rig stays right on them, its tanker whiplashing violently.

"Faster! He's right on us!" Finch shouts to Jaune.

Jaune looking at the speedometer see's that it is going 60 miles per hour. "This is the vehicles top speed." He said.

The tractor-trailer whirls as it roars right up to the screen, filling the frame with chrome and lights. K-WHAM! It rams the backs of the pickup, sending it skidding. Then Cardin pulls the tractor trailer up alongside the pickup and crabs over, sandwiching it against the center divider. The spinning chrome hubs tear into the passenger side door and the guard rail screeches along the other side.

The pickup bucks and shakes insanely. It ricochets violently between the big-rig and the divider; a horrible screech erupts from the tortured steel, causing the Faunus to flinch. Sparks pour in sheets of fire from both sides. The windshield shatters as the door-posts buckle in. Metal and glass shower in through the side windows. The frame twists and buckles. Finch feels like the fillings in his teeth are being shaken right out.

The wooden camper disintegrates, falling away as kindling behind them.

Cardin holds the wheel hard over, mercilessly grinding the pickup. The whole rig jerks and shakes with the violence of the sustained hammering.

Jaune slides toward the passenger side. Keeping his foot on the gas he lifts Finch over him and puts him in the driver's seat.

"Drive a minute." Jaune said.

"Where you going?!" Finch said.

Jaune slams the shattered windshield with the palm of his hand. Held together by the plastic laminate, the windshield flops out of its frame. It flies over the top of the truck. Jaune pushes his upper body out over the dashboard and stands up. He turns and aims the M-79 one-handed. POOM! The grenade misses Cardin by less than a foot. It explodes against the front bulkhead of the tanker, almost at the top. Liquid nitrogen pours from the opening, swept back by the 60-mph Windstream.

The big-rig swerves as Cardin regains control. The tanker swings like a pendulum behind the cab. The pickup accelerates, getting back out in front by a few yards. Behind it the big-rig is trailing a swirling comet-tail of nitrogen vapor. Then it is gaining again.

Jaune, still standing, opens the breech and starts to reload. Finch cuts across the highway and takes an off ramp. Cardin swerves the smoking behemoth across the lanes and down the ramp after him, still accelerating. It is twenty feet behind them and closing when Jaune closes the breech and fires. The grenade hits the front grill and explodes. The radiator is destroyed, along with half the hood in the explosion. Steam blasts out, obscuring the whole front of the truck.

The semi rams the back of the pickup again. Spewing smoke and vapor like some demon locomotive, the tractor-trailer pounds into the back of the pickup. Driving it right through the intersection at the bottom of the ramp, and straight toward an area of heavy industry.

The gates are blasted off their hinges as the semi rams the pickup right through them. Jaune struggles to reload amid the chaos and impacts. He has three grenades left on the bandolier. Finch isn't even steering anymore, they are just being pushed. There's nothing he can do. They are rocketing down the broad thoroughfare which leads directly to the main building of the plant. Jaune pulls himself onto the roof of the pickup. He leaps to the bed, takes two powerful strides and Leaps onto the semi. He climbs rapidly onto the hood, and fires point blank through the windshield. Right into Cardin's face.

The explosion blows out all the glass and fills the cab with smoke and fire. Jaune grabs onto the wheel and jerks it with all his might. As the truck starts to shudder, in an almost dream-slow motion, the cab begins to swing sideways, until its tires are shrieking over the pavement. The tractor is smashed back at right-angles to the tanker-trailer which begins to slide broadside. The juggernaut bucks and shudders as the tires and smoke sideways across the pavement. It begins to topple. Jaune hold on as the side of cab becomes the top. With an unholy scream, like the unoiled hubs of Hell, the whole rig slides on its side at 60 mph toward the steel mill. A sheet of sparks sixty feet wide trails behind it on the pavement.

Finch sees what's behind him, then snaps around to see the building looming right in front. The huge rolling doors are partly open. No choice. He steers right through them into the mill, as Jaune, with one second to go, leaps from the cab. He flies through the open doors as the tanker hits the building. Jaune slams to the floor of the mill and rolls, as the tanker-trailer smashed into a massive concrete support at one side of the doors. A thunderous carnage of twisting metal splits it wide open. A river of liquid nitrogen pours out at -230.

Finch hits the brakes, sliding out of control. He slows almost to a stop but hits a steel support column head-on. He and Winter are slammed forward, hard.

Jaune, still clutching the M-79 blooper, rolls and slides across the floor. He smashes through a railing and slams up against the base of a massive machine.

The semi cab swings about the trailer wreckage, into the building, and shudders to a stop. Liquid nitrogen sprays over the cab, flooding out around it in a hissing wave front of ultracold. Freezing vapor swirls everywhere, obscuring the wreck.

Jaune lies still. A beat. Then he rolls weakly, rising on one elbow to survey the scene.

In the wrecked pickup, Finch stirs. He is stunned, and blood is running down his nose. Dazed, he realizes that he's in a steel mill. There are sirens, and he can see men running... shouting. He turns and sees what they are running from...

The wall of nitrogen vapor spreads from the demolished tanker. It is a strange vista of fire and ice. The huge smelters pour out orange light and fire from the sides of the huge galley, while the freezing vapor rolls down the center.

Tight on the wreck, a billowing gray clouds the vapor. Deep inside, the shape of the cab is visible. A figure emerges, pulling itself out. It drops to the floor. The hissing, boiling river of liquid nitrogen flows around its feet.

Cardin staggers, moving slowly, painfully. It has finally been affected by something. Its feet are freezing to the ground as it walks. CLINK! One of its feet breaks off at a glassy angle.

It stumbles forward, and its other foot snaps off. As it catches its balance on the stump of its other ankle, the whole lower leg shatters at the impact. It topples forward to its knees. It manages to catch itself on one hand, liquid nitrogen flowing around the appendage. Now the hand is stuck to the pavement. Cardin pulls and... CLINK! The hand snaps off at the wrist. It looks stupidly at the glassy stump of a wrist. For the first time we see an expression on its face everyone knows to be a true one... Pain. Agony. Its mouth opens in a soundless scream as the hoar-frost races up its legs, across its body. And that's the position it freezes in. It has become a statue, kneeling in the frozen vapor, that surprised look of agony frozen on its face.

The liquid nitrogen stops flowing and begins to evaporate. Jaune, just beyond the boundary of the cold, can see Cardin clearly. He draws his .45 and aims.

"Hasta la vista, baby." Jaune said. K-POW! The single shot blows Cardin into a million diamonds spraying up into the air.

They shimmer across the ground for twenty feet in all directions. Jaune lowers the gun, satisfied. He looks like he needs a vacation.

Finch and Winter have seen it from the pickup. She is in bad shape, conscious but very weak. He tries the door. It's jammed. He kicks it open.

"Okay, Mom, we gotta get out now, come on. That's it." Finch said.

He helps her slide down from the seat of the truck. Her knees give way, so he had to take a lot of her weight for support. He reaches in and picks up the riot gun off the seat. They hobble toward Jaune. On his knees, he looks into the dissipating cloud of vapor. The heat of the furnaces has evaporated all the liquid nitrogen.

The T-1000 shards are melting, liquefying. Hundreds of drops of mercury spattered across the floor. Orange light from the enormous black furnaces dances on liquid metal.

Jaune struggles to rise. some leg-servos are damaged. He can barely stand. Finch and Winter arrive.

"We don't have much time." Jaune said.

"What?" Finch asked.

Jaune points. Finch and Winter watch as the T-1000 droplets are creeping together. Fusing into larger blobs. These pools shiver and run together, soon forming a central mass.

Finch and Winter pale, realizing that it's not over.

"Come on! Let's go!" Finch said.

Jaune gets one of Winter's arms over his shoulder and they go. Behind them, something is moving. A head is forming up out of a pool mercury. It rises, as shoulders begin to form, hunching up from the liquid mass. Half-formed, it turns to look straight at them.

Finch looks back in new terror as the T-1000 rises to man-height. It is still in its mercury form, but its features are forming rapidly. It takes its first step after them. Winter stumbles and they pull her up. Jaune himself has a pronounces limp, dragging one leg with a shattered ankle joint. Finch is the one pulling, straining, driving them forward.

The T-1000 steps into frame, fully formed into that of Cardin. The hell-fire light glints on its impassive cop face. It walks forward. At first it seems unaffected by its crystallization.

But as it touches a railing in passing, the railing that is covered with O.S.H.A., yellow-and-black safety tape, the hand turns yellow and black, the color fading to normal by about the elbow. It looks down at his hand, and with narrowed eyes, rips the hand from the railing with difficulty. There is a sound like adhesive tape ripping off the surface. Cardin looks at its yellow-and-black striped hand. It wills the hand back to normal. The audience can see ripples of "static" or system noise moving subtly over the surface of its body. It's starting to "glitch".

They move around another corner into a maze of monstrous machinery. The heat is tremendous, the two humans already sweating. The air shivers with a pounding roar.

Winter cries out in pain and stumbles again.

"Come on, Mom, you can do it! Come on!" Finch said.

They drag her up, and stagger on. Her leg is bathed in blood and she is deathly pale.

Tracking with Cardin's feet. The people could see that with each step, the pattern on the tile floor "invades" its lower legs, fading as the foot is lifted and returns as it is set down. Its feet are trying to meld with the floor. The chameleonic function is out of control, Cardin is losing it. It moves forward, searching. It rounds the corner, entering the aisle between the furnaces.

Jaune sees a silhouette closing on them through the smoky gleam. The T-1000 breaks into a loping run when it sees them, Jaune turns to Winter over with Finch.

"Keep going." Jaune said.

Finch shakes his head no. "No, we got to stick together."

The T-1000 is almost on them.

"Finch, you got to go now. GO!" Jaune said.

Finch runs, dragging, half-carrying Winter as best he can. She can barely stay conscious.

Jaune looks back and prepares himself for battle. He slowly moves forward, cautiously, his eyes scanning for the hostile. Suddenly from the shadows Cardin smacks the weapon out of his hands. It clatters on the floor and off the hallway before landing on a platform. Jaune lunges, slamming the T-1000 against a wall with all his weight.

Meanwhile, Finch and Winter had just reached the back of the aisle. It is a cul-de-sac, blocked on the end by the base of an immense smelter crucible. They turn to watch the titans battle in silhouette, backlit by the molten sparks falling from the furnaces above.

Jaune grabs Cardin and hurls it with incredible force against the opposite wall of the narrow alley.

In less time than it would take to turn, Cardin morphs through itself, front to back... face emerging from the back of its head.

Cardin comes off the wall straight at Jaune, who smashes his good fist into its face. The pile-driver blow buries Jaune's fist almost to the elbow.

But Cardin's head morphs in a split-second into a hand which grip Jaune's wrist, and the head "emerges" somewhere else, the geometry shifting faster than the audience could follow.

Cardin slams Jaune into a large machine, jamming his arm into the moving works. A massive sliding bar scissors his arm, smashing it into junk at the elbow, pinning him in the machine.

Jaune strains against the machine pinning him. The audience winces as they hear the arm's servos whining in overload. The T-1000 smirks, then turns around and heads in search for Winter and Finch. Jaune strains to reach a 6-foot steel bar lying near him.

He gets hold of the end and uses it as a lever. With titanic effort he spreads the massive components which are holding him, and withdraws him arm, which is severed at the elbow, dangling junk hangs from the crushed joint.

Winter, seeing Cardin behind them, cursed and hurls Finch into a gap between the machines. He falls into a maze of pipes and girders. Finch turns to see her in the entrance of the narrow gap. She could follow him, but she doesn't. Suddenly a dark mass moves towards him. Finch gasps as a huge steel counterweight, driven by a chain 6 inches thick, slides toward him. He rolls out of the way, but when he looks back, he cannot see the opening.

"Mom! MOMMM!" Finch shouted.

Winter has lost sight of Finch. It is much of a goodbye as they will have. She turns as Cardin closes in on her. She is half-slumped against the sooty machines, looking barely conscious. She struggles to load a shell into the empty weapon. At the last instant she whips up the riot gun and fires.

Cardin's face is blown open, but quickly reforms as it closes on her. She fumbles to get another shell into the magazine but -THUNK! A steel needle slams through her shoulder, pinning her to the metal behind her and causing Winter's family to gasp in horror. The polymorphic killer cocks back its other hand. The index finger extends as a gleaming needle towards her eye.

"Call to Finch now." Cardin demanded.

"Fuck you." Winter said.

WHAM! Something whistles down on Cardin with such force that is cleaves it head and body in two down to the naval. A 6-foot steel bar is seen imbedded in its body.

Cardin, reacting to the strike, kicks Jaune away from him. He then turns around, pulls the steel shaft out of itself and attacks Jaune with surprising fury. Swinging again and again, he's hammering Jaune's back. From the continued assault, Jaune falls back against the wall.

Behind Cardin is an enormous I-beam, hanging from two chains and used to lift ingots into the smelters. From what the audience could see, it runs on a linear track.

Cardin grabs the I-beam and rolls it down the track. Straight at Jaune. The two-ton girder smashes into his chest, crushing the armor. Everyone flinched at the sound of metal crushing and breaking inside him.

Jaune tries to grip the wall, but as he turns around...

The second blow slams into his back, smashing his spine and pelvis. We hear servos ratcheting and failing. He drops to his knees, crucified on a wall of machinery.

The last blow was centered between his shoulder blades, with more sound of crushing metal being heard. They could see his skull partially caved in. He soon slides to the floor, his body can't take much more.

Cardin, emotionless, walks forward.

Jaune is a pathetic shape on the floor. He is trying to crawl, feebly. Dragging his malfunctioning legs behind the crushed spine. His arm stump screeches on the tile floor as he inches himself forward. His exposed machine eye burns red with determination within the exposed skeletal machinery.

The screen pans out a bit to show his prize. He has the M-79, fully loaded, in his sight.

His metal fingers reach out for it as Cardin raises the heavy steel bar over his head and stabs it down with unbelievable force.

It punches into Jaune's back, through a gap in the shattered armor. Cardin levers it back and forth, widening the hole. Then it raises the pointed bar again and slams it down. It punches right through, emerging from Jaune's chest, and into the floor. He is pinned down.

Jaune sags face down and slowly stops moving, the red light slowly going out of his eye.

Winter, still on the walkway, slowly but surely begins to reload the shotgun to its max. She is on the lookout for Cardin.

The screen goes back to Jaune to see his unmoving body. Within his robotic eye, the light slowly comes back.

From Jaune's perspective, they could see that a secondary power unit was coming online and running. Jaune looks around with a raised eyebrow, before remembering what was happening. He grabs the beam from underneath him and begins pulling downward to release himself. Now done with that, he grabs the M-79 and slowly brings it to himself.

Above Finch, vast machines churn untended. He hears a voice... Winter's calling low and urgent to him. "Finch? Finch? Can you hear me? Where are you?" Winter said.

He crawls out of the shadows and onto a landing next to one of the smelter crucibles. Molten steel glows a bright orange in the crucible of the furnace. Heat shimmers the air, giving everything a hallucinatory quality. Finch sees Winter nearby, limping toward him. She can barely move, her leg bathed in blood. He runs toward her.

Gasping in pain, Winter said "Help me, honey."

Tight on Winter, her stoic face as she hobbles forward, reaching out to him. Something rises behind her, out of focus. Another, identical Winter... but this one has a shotgun.

Aimed right at the screen.

Finch freezes. 'Which is which?' He looks down. The first Winter's feet are melded with the floor, sucking and fusing with the tiles as she walks. They have the color and pattern of the tiles up to the knee.

"Finch, get out of the way!" Winter said.

"SHOOT!" Finch shouted.

Finch dives aside. The Winter-form spins, quickly changing back into Cardin. Winter starts unloading the shotgun into it. BOOM! It staggers back. K-CHAK. She chambers another round. BOOM! It staggers again. K-CHAK. BOOM! And again. And again. Cardin is blown back a step as Winter advances with each shot. The craters in Cardin's body "heal" slowly. Its power is waning. She fires again. And again. Her eyes blazing with feral intensity. She walks it back, right to the edge of the pit of molten steel.

K-CHAK... CLICK. She looks down at her gun in horror. She's empty. And Cardin is right at the edge. In a second it will recover its composure, as its crater hits slowly closes. She has failed.

Cardin now healed, slowly lifts a finger and waves it left and right as if to say "no no no".

Knowing it will kill them both, they turn around to try to escape. They take a few steps forward only to stop.

Coming out of the smoke, the two sees Jaune, riding up a gear, as he aims his launcher carefully. Finch and Winter dive to the ground. Jaune, with his half human flesh, half chrome steel showing, his red eye gazing right at the audience, fires.

Cardin takes the round in the belly. Looking at the impact, Cardin looks up in shock. The grenade then explodes inside its body. A huge hole is blown clean through it, and it is ripped open and peeled back, half inside-out. Warped.

The thing pauses, as if it couldn't comprehend its predicament. It then groans a bit, sounding like tearing metal coming from its lips. Finally, after taking too much damage, it topples into the molten steel.

Cardin's head and upper body reappears above the molten steel with a scream. A terrifying, inhuman siren of a scream, causing more than a few to hug themselves in fear. It then starts changing. Morphing. Transforming into anything and everything it's ever been so rapidly the eye can barely follow it. The audience catches a glimpse of Cinder checkered with the linoleum tile colors. Lewis the Guard, with knives exploding from his face. Then to other faces, switching at a stroboscopic rate now... a different face every two seconds trying to rip free from the main mass until they all merge into one face. Cardin screams and slips beneath the surface of the molten steel, liquid silver running in dissipating whorls over the superheated surface... until it vanishes, swirling into nothing.

Finch runs to Winter, with her leaning over the ledge and staring into the pit. The empty shotgun slips from her fingers and clatters to the floor. He sees that she's okay and he runs to the fallen Jaune.

The crippled cyborg is trying to rise. His servos whine and stutter. He, rather pathetically, lifts himself to a kneeling position, collapses... and tries again. Finch helps lift him up for all he's worth.

"Get up. Come on." Finch said as he helps the crippled machine get on its feet. He can barely stand.

"Holy shit." Finch said as he saw badly messed up Jaune look in his current condition.

Jaune now finally composed, simply said "I need a vacation."

They walk to the edge of the pit. Jaune looks down and sees that it is over.

Finch looks to Jaune and asks, "Is it dead?"

"Terminated." Jaune answers with a nod.

Finch unzips Winter's backpack and takes out the hand of the first Terminator.

"Will it melt in there?" Finch asked.

"Yes. Throw it in." Jaune said.

He does. It sinks into the lava, vanishing into the liquid.

"And the chip." Jaune said.

Finch takes it out of his pocket. He looks at it, then tosses it into the smelter.

"It's finally over." Winter said in relief.

"No." Jaune said.

Winter turns to look at Jaune as he slowly turns to look at her. "There is one more chip." Jaune said.

He touches a metal finger to the side of his head. "And it must be destroyed also."

Jaune turns to a mechanism and hands it to Winter. It's a control that lifts and lowers objects. "Here, I cannot self-Terminate. You must lower me into the smelter."

Finch suddenly understands what he means. Jaune looks at Winter. They both know what must be done. Finch shakes his head.

"No." Finch said.

"I'm sorry, Finch. I'm sorry." Jaune apologized.

"No, no no! It'll be OK. Stay with us! It'll be OK." Finch exclaimed.

"I have to go away, Finch." Jaune said.

"Don't do it. Please... don't go." Finch said as the tears are streaming down his face.

Tight closeup on Jaune, turning toward Finch. The human side of his face is in shadow, so he mostly sees the chrome skull and the red eye.

"It must end here... or I am the future." Jaune said.

"I order you not to!" Finch said.

Jaune puts his hand on Finch's shoulder. He moves slightly and the human side of his face comes into the light. He reaches toward Finch's face. His metal finger touches the tear trickling down his cheek.

"I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do." Jaune says in a sad tone.

Winter looks at Jaune. Reaches out her hand to shake it. They lock eyes. Warriors. Comrades.

"Are you afraid?" Winter questioned Jaune.

"Yes." Jaune answered. For the first time ever, he felt afraid.

He turns and steps off the edge, onto the chain.

"Goodbye." Jaune said.

Winter pushes the button and they watch him sink slowly into the lava. He slowly disappears...his head, arm, and the metal hand sinking last... and at the last second it forms into a fist with the thumb extended... a final thumbs up. Then it is gone.

Finch and Winter, watching through the heat ripples. Winter then hugs a mourning Finch as she thinks on this.

The screen then changes to that of pavement rushing at us, lit by headlights. Beyond, darkness. Then Winter's voice is heard one last time.

" _The unknown future moves toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life… maybe we can too."_


End file.
